Bolivia

Official name Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia (Plurinational State of Bolivia)
Form of government unitary multiparty republic with two legislative houses (Chamber of Senators [36]; Chamber of Deputies [130])
Head of state and government President: Evo Morales Ayma
Capitals La Paz (administrative)1; Sucre (constitutional)1, 2
Official languages Spanish and 36 indigenous languages
Official religion none
Monetary unit boliviano (Bs) Population (2013 est.) 10,516,000COLLAPSE
Total area (sq mi) 424,164
Total area (sq km) 1,098,581
Urban-rural population
Urban: (2010) 66.4% Rural: (2010) 33.6% Life expectancy at birth
Male: (2010) 64.2 years Female: (2010) 68.5 years Literacy: percentage of population age 15 and over literate
Male: (2009) 95.8% Female: (2009) 86.8% GNI per capita (U.S.$) (2012) 2,220

Background of Bolivia

Bolivia, country of west-central South America. Extending some 950 miles (1,500 km) north-south and 800 miles (1,300 km) east-west, Bolivia is bordered to the north and east by Brazil, to the southeast by Paraguay, to the south by Argentina, to the southwest and west by Chile, and to the northwest by Peru. Bolivia shares Lake Titicaca, the second largest lake in South America (after Lake Maracaibo), with Peru. The country has been landlocked since it lost its Pacific coast territory to Chile in the War of the Pacific (1879–84), but agreements with neighbouring countries have granted it indirect access to the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The constitutional capital is the historic city of Sucre, where the Supreme Court is established, but the administrative capital is La Paz, where the executive and legislative branches of government function.

Bolivia is traditionally regarded as a highland country. Although only one-third of its territory lies in the Andes Mountains, most of the nation’s largest cities are located there, and for centuries the highlands have attracted the nation’s largest amount of mining, commercial, and business investment. In the late 20th century, however, the demographic and economic landscape began to change as the eastern lowlands—particularly the department of Santa Cruz—developed rapidly.

The country has a rich history. It was once the centre of the ancient Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) empire, and from the 15th to the early 16th century it was a part of the Inca empire. After the arrival of the conquistadores, Bolivia was subsumed within the Viceroyalty of Peru, and it provided Spain with immense wealth in silver.

Geography of Bolivia

Landlocked Bolivia is equal in size to California and Texas combined. Brazil forms its eastern border; its other neighbors are Peru and Chile on the west and Argentina and Paraguay on the south. The western part, enclosed by two chains of the Andes, is a great plateau—the Altiplano, with an average altitude of 12,000 ft (3,658 m). Almost half the population lives on the plateau, which contains Oruro, Potosí, and La Paz. At an altitude of 11,910 ft (3,630 m), La Paz is the highest administrative capital city in the world. The Oriente, a lowland region ranging from rain forests to grasslands, comprises the northern and eastern two-thirds of the country. Lake Titicaca, at an altitude of 12,507 ft (3,812 m), is the highest commercially navigable body of water in the world.

Government of Bolivia

Republic.

History of Bolivia

Famous since Spanish colonial days for its mineral wealth, modern Bolivia was once a part of the ancient Inca empire. After the Spaniards defeated the Incas in the 16th century, Bolivia's predominantly Indian population was reduced to slavery. The remoteness of the Andes helped protect the Bolivian Indians from the European diseases that decimated other South American Indians. But the existence of a large indigenous group forced to live under the thumb of their colonizers created a stratified society of haves and have-nots that continues to this day. Income inequality between the largely impoverished Indians who make up two-thirds of the country and the light-skinned European elite remains vast.

By the end of the 17th century, the mineral wealth had begun to dry up. The country won its independence in 1825 and was named after Simón Bolívar, the famous liberator. Hampered by internal strife, Bolivia lost great slices of territory to three neighboring nations. Several thousand square miles and its outlet to the Pacific were taken by Chile after the War of the Pacific (1879–1884). In 1903, a piece of Bolivia's Acre Province, rich in rubber, was ceded to Brazil. And in 1938, after losing the Chaco War of 1932–1935 to Paraguay, Bolivia gave up its claim to nearly 100,000 sq mi of the Gran Chaco. Political instability ensued.

In 1965, a guerrilla movement mounted from Cuba and headed by Maj. Ernesto (Ché) Guevara began a revolutionary war. With the aid of U.S. military advisers, the Bolivian army smashed the guerrilla movement, capturing and killing Guevara on Oct. 8, 1967. A string of military coups followed before the military returned the government to civilian rule in 1982, when Hernán Siles Zuazo became president. At that point, Bolivia was regularly shut down by work stoppages and had the lowest per capita income in South America.

In June 1993, free-market advocate Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was elected president. He was succeeded by former general Hugo Bánzer, an ex-dictator turned democrat who became president for the second time in Aug. 1997. Bánzer made significant progress in wiping out illicit coca production and drug trafficking, which pleased the United States. However, the eradication of coca, a major crop in Bolivia since Incan times, plunged many Bolivian farmers into abject poverty. Although Bolivia sits on South America's second-largest natural gas reserves as well as considerable oil, the country has remained one of the poorest on the continent.

In Aug. 2002, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada again became president, pledging to continue economic reforms and to create jobs. In Oct. 2003, Sánchez resigned after months of rioting and strikes over a gas-exporting project that protesters believed would benefit foreign companies more than Bolivians. His vice president, Carlos Mesa, replaced him. Despite continued unrest, Mesa remained popular during his first two years as president. In a July 2004 referendum on the future of the country's significant natural gas reserves (the second largest in South America), Bolivians overwhelmingly supported Mesa's plan to exert more control over foreign gas companies. Mesa managed to satisfy the strong antiprivatization sentiment among Bolivians without shutting the door on some limited form of privatization in the future. But rising fuel prices in 2005 led to massive protests by tens of thousands of impoverished farmers and miners, and on June 6 Mesa resigned. Supreme court justice Eduardo Rodriguez took over as interim president.

Bolivia's First Indigenous President Asserts the Rights of the Native Population

Constitutional Court Rules That Morales Can Seek Third Term

In the spring of 2013, Bolivia's Constitutional Court ruled that President Evo Morales could run for a third term in the 2014 elections. Even though the country's constitution only allows two consecutive terms, the court ruled that Morales's first term would not be counted because it predated Bolivia's current constitution, which was amended in 2009. The 2009 constitution limited both the president and vice-president to two consecutive terms. Opposition and critics said the ruling proved that the government controlled the court.

In May 2013, President Morales expelled the U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID). Morales had threated to expel the agency for some time, accusing it in the past of funding groups that opposed his policies such as a planned highway through a rainforest preserve. A state news agency in Bolivia reported that the USAID was "accused of alleged political interference in peasant unions and other social organizations." USAID, which had nine American employees in Bolivia, had already reduced its presence in the country. In 2007, USAID had an $89 million budget for programs in Bolivia. However, the budget had been decreased to $17 million in 2013.

Meanwhile, on May 16, 2013, hundreds of teachers, miners and other workers marched into Bolivia's capital. It was the 11th day of demonstrations for higher pensions. Protestors asked for their pensions, which ranged from $21 to $28 a month, to be doubled. Protestors attempted to take over the plaza where the government was located and miners set off dynamite. Police fought off protestors with tear gas.

Morales Embroiled in Controversy Involving NSA Leaker Snowden

Bolivia found itself involved in the international controversy surrounding the future of Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who leaked top-secret information about U.S. domestic surveillance to several news organizations in June 2013. President Morales offered asylum to Snowden. Bolivia was one of about 20 countries from which Snowden sought asylum. On July 3, the plane carrying Morales from Russia back to Bolivia was diverted because several European nations, believing that Snowden was on board the plane, refused Morales access to their airspace. The move created a diplomatic furor, and Morales called the incident an "affront to all [Latin] America," and the vice president, Alvaro Garcia, said Morales was "being kidnapped by imperialism."

France apologized the day after the incident. Morales's regional allies, including presidents from Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay and Venezuela, met in a show of solidarity and demanded an explanation about the incident.

Morales Wins Third Consecutive Term

President Evo Morales won a third consecutive term on Oct. 12, 2014, taking 61% of the vote. His closest opponent in the election was the Democratic Unity Party's Samuel Doria Medina who received 24.5%. During his victory speech, Morales said, "This victory is the victory of the anti-colonialists and the anti-imperialists."

Morales dedicated his third term re-election to Hugo Chávez. Critics expressed fear that Morales would follow Chávez's lead and attempt to stay in office past 2020. The Constitution currently bars him from seeking a fourth term, but last year Bolivia's Constitutional Court ruled that Morales could run for a third term in the 2014 elections. Many suspect his party would seek another change to the Constitution, allowing him to run again like Chávez did in Venezuela.

Land

The people Ethnic groups The population of Bolivia consists of three groups—Indians, mestizos (of mixed Indian and European descent), and people of European (mainly Spanish) descent. After centuries of intermixing, it is difficult to determine the proportion of each, but it is estimated that Indians form about three-fifths of the total, mestizos make up nearly one-third, and people of European ancestry account for about one-tenth of the population.

The largest Indian groups are the Aymara, Quechua, and Guaraní. The Aymara, who speak a guttural language, live mainly on the northern and central Altiplano. The Quechua, direct descendants of the Inca, are found in the southern Altiplano and on nearby mountains as well as in the valleys of Cochabamba, Chuquisaca, and Potosí. Guaraní communities, such as the Chimane, Mojeno, Guarayo, and Chiquitano, live in the lowland forests and savannas of southern Santa Cruz department, and the departments of Chuquisaca and Tarija. The great majority of Bolivian Indians are farmers, miners, and factory or construction workers. However, an increasing number have become professionals, and Aymara and Quechua political leaders have been elected to Congress. (Victor Hugo Cardenas, an Aymara from the shores of Lake Titicaca, served as vice president of Bolivia in 1993–97, and in 2006 Evo Morales, also an Aymara, became the country’s first Indian president.)

In the cities the mestizos, many of whom are either migrants from rural areas or their descendants, are well represented in the offices, trades, and small businesses. The traditional European minority—those of Spanish descent—have long formed the local aristocracy in small towns and rural areas. Their influence remains, although it has diminished since the National Revolution of 1952.

In addition to immigrants from Germany, the Balkan region, Japan, and England, the country has received Mennonites from Mexico and Paraguay. Many foreigners who worked in the highland mining centres of Potosí and Oruro eventually settled in Bolivia and have played an important role in the country’s political, economic, and social life. Small numbers of Germans arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and established themselves, with notable success, as business agents and entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, and accountants. Japanese and Okinawan farmers, who first arrived in 1899 and were followed by many thousands in the late 1950s and the ’60s, have made major contributions to the economy of Santa Cruz.

Languages and religion Spanish and 36 indigenous languages are official in Bolivia per the 2009 constitution. Previously only Spanish, Aymara, and Quechua were official languages of the country. Many Indians, particularly in the cities, market towns, and new colonies, speak or understand Spanish.

The proportion of Roman Catholics has decreased slowly but still accounts for almost four-fifths of the population. A primate cardinalship, located in Sucre, heads the church hierarchy in Bolivia. Since the 1940s the Roman Catholic Church has ventured from an almost exclusively ceremonial role into the fields of social aid, the news media, and education. In the late 20th century membership grew in various Protestant denominations (notably Evangelical churches), and there were also increasing numbers of Bahāʾīs and Mormons. Bolivia has a small Jewish community.

Some characteristics of pantheistic pre-Columbian religion have survived in the Indian communities of the Altiplano, especially the worship of Pachamama, the goddess of the Earth. Also worshiped is the sun god, legendary creator of the first Inca emperor Manco Capac and his sister-wife Mama Ocllo on the Island of the Sun in Lake Titicaca. Through the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has accepted some indigenous rituals and customs by assimilation, mainly through combined Catholic and traditional celebrations that continue to be an important part of life in rural and urban settings. For example, in the mining cities of Potosí and Oruro, tens of thousands of Bolivians and foreign tourists celebrate Carnival by paying homage to the Virgin of the Mines and to Pachamama. During the festival, dancers wear elaborate masks and outfits that depict devils, their blue-eyed mistresses, Inca rulers, and African slave drivers. In the mines, llamas are sacrificed as part of the worship of Pachamama and of Tío, the protector of the mines.

Demography At the beginning of the 20th century the population of Bolivia was estimated at 1,800,000. After 25 years of slow growth thereafter it had increased to about 2,300,000. Between 1925 and 1950 the population grew at a slightly accelerated rate (despite the losses of the Chaco War), increasing by about 750,000. The population increased dramatically by at least 2,250,000 (to some 5,300,000) during the next 25 years as the death rate fell and the birth rate remained consistently high. During the last quarter of the 20th century the rate of population growth slowed somewhat but was still among the higher rates in Latin America.

The rate of urbanization has paralleled that of population growth. At the beginning of the 20th century fewer than one-tenth of Bolivians lived in urban areas, but by 1950 the urban population had more than doubled. At the beginning of the 21st century nearly two-thirds of Bolivians were urban.

The economy Bolivia is well endowed with natural resources. Among the country’s most valuable assets are its mineral deposits, hydrocarbons (petroleum and natural gas), and its renewable natural resources, such as agricultural and forest products, especially soybeans and Brazil nuts. Its economic development has been limited, however, by high production costs and lack of investment; persisting obstacles include an inadequate transportation infrastructure and the country’s landlocked location. Average per capita income is low, and Bolivia remains one of the poorest countries in South America.

The revolutionary program of 1952–53 included immediate agrarian reform, based on breaking up the large estates and nationalizing the mines. Initially, however, agricultural production decreased, mineral output dropped disastrously, and wages increased. The government, attempting to satisfy the new labour unions, did not reduce the surplus number of miners, nor did it promote greater efficiency in many other sectors of the economy. Thus, despite the long-overdue political and social reforms embodied in the revolution, the rate of national economic growth remained extremely low. The economy, depending on the earnings from tin exportation, fluctuated wildly. In the early 1980s the country’s businesses stagnated as a result of falling world tin prices, bad harvests, debt repayments, and inflation that became hyperinflation. In 1985, however, the government of Pres. Víctor Paz Estenssoro enacted some of the continent’s toughest austerity measures and dropped the inflation rate from 24,000 percent to less than 10 percent. In the 1990s the economy grew rapidly, and billions of dollars in new investment came into Bolivia after the administration of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Bustamente (1993–97) privatized nearly the entire state-run economy. By 2006, Pres. Juan Evo Morales Ayma—who shares a leftist ideology with close allies Pres. Hugo Chavéz of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba—had begun a shift back toward the nationalization of Bolivia’s industries to counter foreign control and to better fund social programs for the poor.

Nevertheless, Bolivia continues to receive considerable foreign technical assistance and long-term loans from international organizations, including the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as from numerous creditor nations. However, its governments have been able to shift their priorities from administering deficit-run—and often corrupt—state-owned companies to improving the country’s dire health and educational services and transportation infrastructure. Important boosts to the economy also accompanied the rapid development of agriculture and extraction industries in the Santa Cruz region, the growth of natural gas and oil exploration in the surrounding areas of Tarija, Chuquisaca, Santa Cruz, and Cochabamba, the modernization of the telecommunications industry, and new investments in electric power generation and water services.

Resources MINERALS The country is a major producer of tin and gold, and, although its exports of zinc and silver are small parts of the world market, they account for a significant portion of export earnings. Bolivia also has reserves of antimony, tungsten (wolfram), lead, copper, and lithium. Tin long dominated metal production, but by the late 20th century both foreign and domestic companies were investing more heavily in gold and silver extraction. The country continues, however, to be exceptionally vulnerable to changes in world tin demand. In the 1980s, for example, a glut in the world market forced the formerly state-owned mining corporation, Corporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL), to cut its production drastically and lay off more than two-thirds of its workforce.

Until the late 20th century, Bolivian tin and silver were extracted mostly by large shaft-mining operations, often performed in difficult, remote sections of the eastern cordilleras and at high elevations. The ores were low-grade, often varied in content, and were difficult to refine. The rise of open-pit silver- and gold-mining operations, coupled with the privatization of state mining companies, changed the face of Bolivia’s mining industry. Many of the mines were taken over by cooperatives owned by former employees. Most workers at the cooperatives, however, continued to labour under extremely difficult conditions and often lacked social benefits.

After the state pulled out of mineral exploration, most of Bolivia’s mineral production fell into the hands of Compañía Minera del Sur (COMSUR), Inti Raymi, and a number of smaller mining companies, as well as foreign-owned companies. However, after President Morales took office in 2006, he nationalized many of the mining firms. Under a new constitution promulgated in January 2009, COMIBOL must oversee the operations of foreign mining companies.

In the early 21st century Mount Potosí (Cerro Rico), which has been intensively mined since the mid-16th century, sparked renewed interest because of its still-sizable reserves of silver. In addition, an increasing world demand for lithium (used in batteries for high-tech devices) brought renewed attention to the large reserves of untapped lithium in Bolivia; huge deposits lie beneath the Uyuni Salt Flat in the southwestern part of the country. The Bolivian government, wary of foreign exploitation, discussed options and feasibility for the mineral’s extraction and production.

HYDROCARBONS Development of Bolivia’s petroleum resources dates from 1920, when the Standard Oil Company of the United States acquired a concession to explore and exploit the Andean foothill zone in southeastern Bolivia. A series of small oil fields were discovered there, but Standard Oil’s operation was expropriated in 1937 to form the nationalized Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB). In the mid-1950s North American companies were again encouraged to resume operations, and in 1956 the Bolivian Gulf Oil Company (a branch of Gulf Oil Corporation) began a decade of successful oil and natural gas strikes in the Santa Cruz region. In 1966 Gulf began exporting oil to southern California via the YPFB pipeline to the Pacific port of Arica, Chile, and it also boosted the YPFB’s sales to the domestic market and to Argentina. Political uncertainties disrupted the industry, however, and in 1969 Bolivia nationalized the Gulf Oil operation. The government again promoted foreign oil investment in 1972, but production continued to fall during subsequent decades because of a lack of capital and the failure to replace depleted wells. In addition, some oil had to be imported to meet soaring domestic consumption. The YPFB was partly privatized in the 1990s.

Natural gas production has been more successful. As world markets for tin diminished, natural gas became Bolivia’s most valuable legal export by the mid-1980s, accounting for more than half of official total earnings. Argentina was the principal destination of natural gas exports until 1998, when the Bolivia-Brazil natural gas pipeline was opened. In 2006, President Morales nationalized both the country’s natural gas reserves and its oil industry, ordering the military to occupy the fields and giving the state control of energy production. Foreign companies were to hand over majority control to the YPFB.

ELECTRIC POWER Bolivia’s rivers have considerable, largely untapped hydroelectric potential, and per capita electric consumption remains low. Partly in an effort to improve services, a controlling interest in the National Electric Company was sold in the 1990s to energy companies in the United States and Spain, and the remaining shares were turned over to a national pension system. Hydroelectric stations generate power in the regions of La Paz and Cochabamba, and thermoelectric plants fueled by natural gas generate power in Santa Cruz and Cochabamba for the integrated national distribution system. Foreign companies have also invested in separate electric systems in Tarija and Trinidad, and the Bolivian government has encouraged plans for the exporting of electricity to Brazil.

Agriculture About two-fifths of the working population is engaged in agriculture (including small numbers in hunting, forestry, and fishing), but farming accounts for only about one-seventh of the gross domestic product (GDP). Although peasant markets have grown in the northern cities, in roadside towns on the Altiplano, and around Cochabamba, subsistence farming remains widespread in the Andes.

Potatoes, which are available in thousands of varieties, have been a staple in the Andes since pre-Columbian times, centuries prior to the food’s introduction into Europe. Both potatoes and oca (another edible tuber) are indigenous to the northern Altiplano, where they are eaten mainly in the dehydrated forms known as chuño or tunta. The two important grains that ripen at this elevation, both highly nutritious, are quinoa and cañahua (cañihua). Other important crops there include barley, wheat, fava beans, and, around Lake Titicaca, corn (maize). Llamas and alpacas are raised in the Andean region and serve a variety of agricultural functions, although the use of the llama as a pack animal has decreased with the growth of truck transport.

Among the enormous variety of crops produced in the Yungas are coffee, cacao, citrus fruits, bananas, avocados, pineapples, mangoes, papayas, melons, chili peppers, sweet potatoes (yams), and cassava (manioc). Cultivation of coca leaves, the raw material in the processing of cocaine, continues to play a major role in the economy (see Trade). In the warm, agreeable climate of the Valles, corn, wheat, barley, alfalfa, grapes, flowers, strawberries, peaches, and vegetables are grown, and sheep and dairy cattle are raised. This fertile region, which is characterized as the garden of Bolivia, has grown further in importance as more-systematic irrigation systems have been introduced and modern farming techniques used.

In the Oriente around Santa Cruz, soybeans are the main crop, and sugarcane, rice (dry and paddy), and cotton are also significant, as is the raising of beef cattle. Soybean production grew dramatically from about 80,000 tons in the mid-1980s to more than one million tons in the early 21st century. Soybeans are one of the most important sources of export earnings. Farther north, the Beni region is notable for its large cattle ranches. Tropical hardwoods are exploited in the forests of northern La Paz, Pando, Beni, and Santa Cruz areas, although the logging of rainforests has become a matter of environmental concern.

Industry The manufacturing sector has grown since the 1950s but remains small, despite some stimulus from Bolivia’s membership in the Andean Community and Mercosur, two regional trade organizations. Historically, mineral processing (including oil refining) and the preparation of agricultural products have dominated Bolivian industry. In the early 21st century there were major investments in the processing of soybeans and the manufacture of textiles, wood products, and soft drinks. Textiles using alpaca, cotton, or synthetics are produced in modern factories in La Paz and exported to the United States and Europe. The manufacture of gold jewelry has also become an important industry in La Paz and El Alto.

Food industries include flour milling, dairying, sugar refining, brewing, and alcohol distilling. Other manufactures consist of machinery, shoes, furniture, glass, bricks, cement, paper, and a wide range of small goods designed to meet the needs of a limited domestic market. Although two-thirds of Bolivia’s manufacturing industry was located in or near La Paz at the end of the 20th century, important new investments have been made in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. Many Bolivian companies, however, have found it difficult to compete with imported Brazilian, Argentine, Chilean, Peruvian, and Asian manufactures that are often smuggled into the country.

Services BANKING AND FINANCE The Bolivian banking system is overseen by the government’s Superintendency of Banks and Financial Institutions, founded in 1928. Chief among the five state banks and numerous commercial banks is the Central Bank of Bolivia, which was founded in 1911 as the Bank of the Bolivian Nation; it took its present name in 1928. The Central Bank issues the national currency, the boliviano, and also operates as a commercial bank. The Central Bank is administratively linked to the State Bank (1970); the three other state banks are the Agricultural Bank (1942), the Mining Bank (1936), and the Housing Bank (1964). The country’s privately held commercial banks were deregulated in the mid-1980s following three decades of close government control. In the early 21st century, the Central Bank lost much of its autonomy under the government of Morales.

The Bolivian Stock Exchange (1989) is the main stock exchange, and the government’s Superintendency of Insurance and Reinsurance (1975) oversees several national companies.

TOURISM Tourism is playing an increasingly important role in the economy as Bolivia attracts larger numbers of foreign tourists. New or refurbished hotels opened in the cities of La Paz, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and Sucre, as well as in several sites around Lake Titicaca. Because of the country’s vast variety of natural and cultural resources, as well as its improved economic and political stability, Bolivia has been added to an increasingly popular grand tour of South America—a package tour of continental highlights that attracts visitors from the United States, Europe, Japan, and other countries. Major Bolivian tourist sites are Lake Titicaca and its surroundings, including Inca ruins on the Island of the Sun and pre-Inca ruins at Tiwanaku; the latter were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000. Other tourist attractions include fishermen in totora-reed balsas (rafts), Indian villages on the Altiplano, and the city of La Paz itself.

A thrilling and popular side trip is taken by road over the Cordillera Real and down into the Yungas jungles closest to La Paz, providing within a few hours some of the most dramatic contrasts in scenery and climate in the Andean region. Other important destinations include the Uyuni Salt Flat, which can be reached via train from Oruro; the Jesuit Missions of the Chiquitos in Santa Cruz, which were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1990; and the renowned Baroque architecture of Sucre and Potosí, the historic centres of which were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1991 and 1987, respectively. Increasingly, tourists are also visiting the tropical towns of Rurrenabaque and Riberalta, the Chaparé River (a tributary to the Mamoré), national parks in the Oriente, and the pre-Columbian ruins at Samaipata (a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1998) southwest of Santa Cruz.

TRADE Until the late 20th century the export of metals dominated Bolivia’s trade, but, with the collapse of the world market in tin in the 1980s, natural gas became a leading export; together, metals, petroleum, and natural gas account for most of Bolivia’s legitimate export trade. Soybeans are the principal agricultural export. Manufactured products constitute the largest segment of total imports; machinery and equipment for industry and transport are among the main items. Raw materials, consumer goods, and food products are other major import categories. Bolivia’s primary trading partners include the United States, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Chile, Japan, and China.

Illegal trade in cocaine continues to have a significant but decreasing impact on the Bolivian economy. The leaves of the indigenous coca (Quechua: kúka) shrub have been chewed by Quechua, Aymara, and Guaraní farmers and miners for centuries as a relief against cold and fatigue, and small quantities of coca have long been legally exported for medicinal purposes; people throughout Peru and Bolivia commonly drink coca-leaf tea and do not consider it harmful. The unprecedented expansion of coca cultivation in the Yungas and, especially, in the Chaparé region northeast of Cochabamba began in the 1960s with the sudden growth in the illegal international market for cocaine. As demand soared in North America and Europe in the 1970s and ’80s, Bolivian peasant farmers found that no other crop could compete with coca for profitability. It became the ideal cash crop—easy to grow, valuable, nonperishable, and easy to transport, whether in dried leaf form or as processed cocaine. In the 1980s it was estimated that one-third of the world’s coca was grown in Bolivia. Attempts by the government to introduce crop substitution or to induce peasants to voluntarily reduce their coca acreage initially met with little success. Instead, the area devoted to coca cultivation continued to increase, and greater quantities were exported annually from centres around Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and remote parts of the Oriente. In the 1990s, however, the importance of the Bolivian cocaine trade was undercut by voluntary and forceful eradication programs sponsored by both the United States and Bolivia, as well as by the profitable development of agriculture and other industries in the departments of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. By the end of the decade, it was estimated that national production had decreased to less than one-fourth of the world total. Drug trafficking has provided a significant addition to the country’s gross national product—although this contribution is not officially tabulated as part of the country’s economy—and it has contributed to corruption among law enforcement and other government officials. Although Bolivian and U.S. drug enforcement agencies have made inroads against cocaine trafficking activities, the demand for cocaine in foreign countries has continued to feed the drug trade in Bolivia.

Transportation Bolivia’s economic growth has been hindered both by the landlocked location of the country and by a difficult internal geography of steep mountains and seasonally flooded plains. The situation is ameliorated by agreements with Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay that cover railway connections and duty-free shipping from eastern river ports via the Hidrovía (Paraguay-Paraná Waterway), giving Bolivia access to Atlantic Ocean ports; another treaty, made with Peru in 1993, grants Bolivia overland access to the Pacific Ocean. Following a defense accord signed between Bolivia and Chile in 2008, the port of Iquique in Chile began to transport Bolivian goods freely for the first time since 1904, when a treaty cut off Bolivia’s Pacific outlet. Barges carry soybeans and other crops from Puerto Aguirre (Puerto Quijarro) in eastern Bolivia to Atlantic ports; the ships return with food products, diesel fuel, and industrial goods. The immense river system provides an important means of domestic transportation throughout the tropical lowlands.

The main rail system is in the west; it was built mostly between the 1890s and the 1920s and links the major Andean cities and mines with the Pacific ports of Antofagasta and Arica (both in Chile) and Matarani (Peru), the latter line being connected by shipping across Lake Titicaca. Isolated from this network, the eastern railroad system has its nucleus at Santa Cruz city, which was linked by rail to Corumbá in Brazil and to Argentina via Yacuiba during the 1950s. Since the privatization of the national rail system in 1996, its use for the transport of soybeans, mineral products, and consumer goods has increased rapidly. In 2007, President Morales announced his intention to nationalize Bolivia’s railroads and take full control of the state company, the National Railroad Enterprise (Empresa Nacional de Ferrocarriles; ENFE), as part of his plan to reverse the country’s privatization efforts of the 1990s. The use of railroads for transporting passengers has decreased, however, as bus services have expanded.

Road transport has developed rapidly in highland Bolivia and around Santa Cruz since the mid-1950s, and there are connecting paved highways for most major cities as well as for the colonization centres of the Santa Cruz region. Bus and truck services on unpaved roads connect numerous towns and farming communities, yet journeys in these areas are slow and often hazardous, particularly on the narrow, winding mountain roads, which are seldom lined with guardrails. Along the Andean roadsides are numerous white crosses, tributes to those who have died from collisions or from careening off the road.

Air transport is the only fast link between Bolivia’s major cities and is the primary means by which the isolated settlements in the Oriente are connected to the rest of the country, especially in the rainy season, when roads are often destroyed by heavy rains and landslides. The airline Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano (LAB) was founded by a small group of German businessmen in 1925, and in the second half of the 20th century it played an indispensable political role in helping Bolivia maintain control over the plains and the eastern border regions. LAB flies international routes to South American capitals, as well as to other cities such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Manaus (all in Brazil), Panama City (Panama), and Miami (Florida, U.S.). A newer airline, AeroSur, also provides air passenger service to most Bolivian cities, some tropical towns, and Buenos Aires. The Bolivian Air Force company (Transportes Aéreos Militares; TAM) carries passengers to small towns in the tropical Bolivian lowlands, and numerous foreign-owned airlines also serve the country. In the mid-1990s Santa Cruz opened a new airport, which was considered to be one of the more modern on the continent and quickly became Bolivia’s main air hub.

Administration and social conditions Government Bolivia was declared independent in 1825 and adopted its first constitution in 1826. Despite revisions and numerous military coups, the state has retained a unitary system of government, whether elected or under military dictatorship, the latter having held sway for much of Bolivia’s history. A heavily revised version of the 1967 constitution was promulgated in 1994. According to that document, executive power is vested in a president who is directly elected by popular vote for a five-year term. If no candidate receives an absolute majority of votes, the National Congress must select the president from among the two leading contenders. In January 2009 a new constitution was approved that allowed the president to serve another consecutive five-year term. The bicameral legislature consists of a 36-member Chamber of Senators and a 130-member Chamber of Deputies; members of the legislature are directly elected for five-year terms. The judicial system is headed by a 12-member Supreme Court and a 5-member Constitutional Tribunal, which decides the constitutionality of laws and resolves conflicts between the branches and levels of government. The new constitution required that judges be elected; since 1967 members of both judicial bodies had been appointed by Congress to 10-year terms.

The country is divided into nine departamentos, each of which is headed by a prefect appointed by the president. Departments are subdivided into provincias administered by subprefects, and these provinces are subdivided into cantones administered by corregidores. Since the enactment of the Popular Participation Law in 1994, the country has also been divided into municipios (“municipalities”), which manage 20 percent of the public sector budget; thus, many communities that had been neglected by the central and provincial governments were able to initiate much-needed public works projects.

Women have voted in Bolivian elections since 1938, but literacy and property requirements nevertheless restricted electoral participation to a tiny proportion of the population until the National Revolution of 1952, when universal suffrage was introduced. The nation’s political system is largely controlled by three political parties; numerous smaller parties ranging in outlook from conservative to left-wing also play a role in the country’s political life. Interparty alliances have often been formed to permit national and municipal governments to function.

Education, health, and welfare Primary education for children 6 to 13 years of age is free and officially compulsory, although school attendance is difficult to enforce in some areas. Secondary education, lasting up to 4 years, is not compulsory. At the end of the 20th century about four-fifths of the primary-age children were attending school, but the attendance rate among secondary-age children was much lower, only about one-fourth. Most education is state-supported, but private institutions are permitted. Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish organizations also maintain schools. Adult literacy rates have climbed dramatically since the 1950s, when most Bolivian Indians were illiterate, to about four-fifths of the adult population by the end of the century. The nation’s eight state universities are located in each of the departmental capitals except Cobija (capital of Pando department), and there are numerous private schools, including a Roman Catholic university. The largest institutions of higher learning are the University of San Andrés (founded 1930) in La Paz and Major University of San Simón (1832) in Cochabamba.

There are three levels of health services: those supported by the state through the Ministry of Public Health and Social Security, those provided by the social security system for its affiliates, and private clinics. In general, medical services and hospitals are adequate in the cities but not in rural areas, where doctors and nurses are scarce but respiratory diseases and malnutrition are common. Traveling health workers provide care in colonization zones (the Valles and Oriente), where diseases such as malaria and the deadly Chagas disease (which is carried by the vinchuca bug) are major problems. Several foreign aid organizations have helped institute programs to reduce the infant mortality rate, which is still among the highest on the continent, and provide basic care to rural and poor communities. Folk medicine thrives in some rural areas, such as the Kallawaya Indian communities of the Apolobamba range.

Cultural life Traditional culture Bolivian society embraces a mixture of diverse and extraordinarily rich native Indian cultures as well as the Iberian culture brought by the Spaniards. On religious feast days, for example, pre-Columbian rites are practiced in conjunction with Roman Catholic celebrations, and Aymara, Quechua, and other ethnic groups express themselves through dances and songs that blend indigenous and European influences. During such festivities, symbolic dress shows the Indian interpretation of European attitudes: the dance of the palla-palla caricatures the 16th-century Spanish invaders, the dance of the waka-tokoris satirizes bullfights, and the morenada mocks white men, who are depicted leading imported African slaves. Some highly embroidered and colourful costumes imitate pre-Columbian dress. Many costumes are accompanied by elaborate masks made of plaster, cloth, or tin cans and topped by feather headdresses. The mixture of cultures is also revealed in the music and in the charango, a hybrid instrument that is similar in shape to a guitar, although much smaller; its five double strings resonate on a sound box made from an armadillo shell or a gourd. Other common instruments are the zampoña (panpipes), quena (kena; a notched vertical flute), and percussion instruments of various sizes, including skin drums, bronze gongs, and copper bells. In the lowlands of Santa Cruz and Beni departments, music composed in the 18th century—during the heyday of the Jesuit missions in Latin America—is performed by Guaraní Indians of the Guarayo, Chiquitano, and Mojeno communities.

Highland Indian women in both urban and rural areas still wear traditional multilayered skirts (polleras) and colourful shawls. The shawls may be stuffed with goods being taken to market or with fresh purchases, extra clothing, and a baby, all in a carefully balanced bundle on the back, leaving both hands free. Hats always complete the outfit, their dozens of shapes varying with the different regions of Bolivia and with the marital status of the wearers; for example, in the Quechua town of Tarabuco (near Sucre), single women wear woolen hats, whereas married women don leather hats of a completely different style.

Indians long attempted to imitate Europeans, in custom as well as in dress. However, beginning in the 1940s and especially since the early ’70s, Indian culture and values have been reestablished: traditional music has risen to a higher standard, painters have abandoned the imitation of European fashions, and some of the characteristics of Indian culture have reemerged in the general lifestyle.

Daily life Bolivian daily life is largely dependent on social class, economic status, and place of residence. Whereas Indian traditions persist throughout the nation, they are more strongly pronounced in rural and working-class areas. Most members of the middle and upper classes, however, tend to aspire toward “modern” or Western cultural ideals in their choices of music, clothing, daily entertainment, reading material, and visual arts, in spite of the increasing amount of respect and interest garnered by indigenous art forms.

Television antennas dot the urban landscape, and televisions and long-distance telephone service are now also found in many rural communities. Because of the high cost of fixed phone service, Bolivians from all walks of life are making use of cellular phones—from Aymara market vendors in La Paz to truck drivers in Cochabamba. Middle- and upper-class households, especially those in the cities, are far more likely to own telephones and computers and to enjoy the offerings of mass culture, from Internet cafés and flashy discotheques to satellite and cable TV programming (including telenovelas [soap operas], game shows, and news) and a wider variety of food, clothing, and public transportation. These enticements are partly responsible for rural-to-urban migration among younger Bolivian adults. The reality of life for the urban poor, however, is far from the ideal.

People in the tropical lowlands generally attend more social gatherings and stay out later than residents of the highlands, where restaurants and clubs tend to close earlier because of the chilly evening temperatures. Shopping is largely defined by social standing: the middle and upper classes shop in malls and supermarkets in wealthier neighbourhoods, whereas lower-income residents save money by visiting open markets. However, members of all social classes visit black market areas, which are found in most Bolivian cities; there they can purchase everything from music recordings to computers and cellular phones.

The arts The combination of Indian and European cultural influences in Bolivia has produced a thriving artistic community, and Bolivians have gained prominence in painting, sculpture, classical and traditional music, and folk dancing. Numerous theatres and art galleries in the major cities provide examples of traditional Bolivian music and art. The most prominent museums are the National Museum of Art (1964) and the National Museum of Archaeology (1846), both in La Paz, and the Casa de Moneda National Museum (1938) in Potosí. On La Paz’s Calle Jaen are the Casa de Murillo ethnographic museum (1950) and other small museums exhibiting traditional gold, silver, and textile art. Jewelry in silver and gold, with pre-Columbian decorations and styles, has been made in Bolivia for centuries, and the local markets offer a profusion of colourful handicrafts and fine wood carvings.

Various exhibits, conferences, and lectures are organized at the Bolivian American Centre, L’Alliance Française (a French cultural institute), the British Council, the Goethe Institute, and the Casa de España (Spanish Institute) of Santa Cruz. The nation’s most extensive library holdings are at the University of San Andrés, and there is a smaller collection at the National Library of Congress. The National Archives are in Sucre. The National Symphony Orchestra in La Paz offers regular performances and special concerts for children and for residents of the less developed areas of the city. Choral and native dance groups are found throughout the nation. Educational centres for children include the Kusillo Children’s Museum in La Paz and the Tanga Tanga Children’s Museum in Sucre.

The dozens of Roman Catholic churches and cathedrals, mostly dating from colonial times, constitute a national architectural treasure. They are generally ornamented in an extravagant Baroque style, although some are in Renaissance (e.g., the Cathedral of La Paz) or later styles. The church has supported the restoration and revival of several Jesuit mission churches in the lowlands of the Oriente. In the city of Potosí stands the impressive Casa de Moneda (Treasury House, or Royal Mint), which produced coins for Spain’s American colonies. Under Spanish direction the city’s inhabitants built numerous churches that were decorated with exquisite gold-leaf altars, paintings, and frescoes. Potosí, which is one of the few cities in Bolivia to retain its colonial architectural character, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.

Sports and recreation No other sport in Bolivia approaches the popularity of soccer (association football), and the nation has occasionally gained international recognition for soccer, particularly after their national team placed second at the 1997 South American Championship (Copa America). For decades, separate women’s and men’s games have been played in communities throughout the country, and each city has soccer clubs with devoted fans. Clubs for horseback riding, golf, and tennis offer a variety of activities to the country’s growing middle and upper classes. The cities of La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz have professional-quality golf courses, including one on the outskirts of La Paz at an elevation of 11,000 feet (3,350 metres). Bicycle and automobile racing are also popular, as are volleyball and basketball; bullfighting has a small following. Bolivian boxers have won Latin American championships, but there are few other indoor sports in the nation, because of a lack of facilities.

The most important folk festival is held in Oruro during the Carnival holidays preceding Lent; many Indian musical and dance groups compete, providing a magnificent display of costumes and decorations. Also during Carnival, Santa Cruz is transformed into a frenzy of dancing, drinking, and celebration as tens of thousands of residents and visitors take part in dance ensembles. Among the religious events is the Great Power (Gran Poder) festival in La Paz during May and the celebration of the Virgin of Urkupina in Cochabamba. Potosí, Tarija, Sucre, and the former Jesuit missions in Santa Cruz and Beni also hold large festivals.

Press and telecommunications Bolivia has an active and constitutionally free press, which has been subject to periodic censorship during dictatorial regimes. Each of the departmental capitals except Cobija (in Pando) has at least one daily newspaper. The principal newspapers are El Diario, which is the nation’s oldest; Presencia, published by the Roman Catholic church; La Razón, Última Hora, and La Prensa, all printed in La Paz; El Deber, El Mundo, and El Nuevo Día, in Santa Cruz; and Los Tiempos and La Opinión, in Cochabamba. The Bolivian Times is an English-language magazine published weekly. Newspapers and other publications are quickly distributed by air services, keeping far-flung population clusters informed of national affairs. Many Bolivian periodicals are available on the Internet, which is used increasingly by Bolivian businesses, students, and professionals as a communications and educational tool. Internet cafés have also become popular leisure-time venues and have sprung up in most of the major cities.

Commercial television and radio stations have proliferated in Bolivia; they broadcast mainly in Spanish, although there are several programs in Aymara and Quechua. The privately owned ATB Television Network is now the country’s primary television network, but it competes with several other Bolivian networks and independent television stations. The state-owned National Television Company reaches most Bolivian cities and towns; it covers national and world events, sports, and the arts and also offers documentaries and general entertainment. Middle-class neighbourhoods and hotels in major cities also have access to cable television service with programs from other Latin American countries, Europe, and the United States. Ownership of television sets rose dramatically in the last decades of the 20th century.

Entel, the formerly state-owned telecommunications company, was taken over by Italian investors in the 1990s, whereupon it began modernizing the country’s long-distance communications services, laying a network of fiber-optic cables and introducing digital cellular phone networks. Telecel is another cellular phone provider.

History The following discussion focuses on events in Bolivia since the time of European conquest. For events in a regional context, see Latin America, history of, and, for in-depth treatment of events prior to the conquest, see pre-Columbian civilizations: Andean civilization.

Early period Bolivian society traces its origins to the advanced pre-Columbian civilizations of South America. The high Bolivian plateau known as the Altiplano was already densely populated several centuries before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.

From the 7th century the Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco) empire, the first of the great Andean empires to extend over both the Peruvian coast and highlands, had its centre in the Altiplano region. By the 11th century it had reached its apogee and was replaced by simpler regional states.

In the centuries that followed the collapse of Tiwanaku, the Bolivian highland region maintained its dense populations with irrigation agriculture. By the 15th century the region was controlled largely by some 12 groups of Aymara-speaking Indians; they, in turn, fell under the control of the expanding Inca empire, which had its capital in Cuzco (now in Peru). Because the Aymara were the largest and most prominent non-Quechua-speaking group in the empire, they were allowed to retain their language and ethnic identity under Inca rule. However, large numbers of Quechua speakers were relocated to Aymara territories as part of a deliberate Incan policy of colonization. It was this early pattern of colonization and nonassimilation that gave Bolivia its current linguistic and ethnic makeup: Quechua and Aymara are still the two major Indian languages in Bolivia.

Soon after the Spanish conquest of the Inca empire in the early 16th century, much of the Indian population of Bolivia was forced to labour in mines established by the Spaniards. Notable among these were those exploiting the newly discovered (1545) silver deposits of Potosí—the largest silver mines then known in the Western world. The arid, high-altitude mines of Potosí, along with others discovered near the town of Oruro (founded in 1606), were supplied with food and other basic necessities by such towns as Chuquisaca (1538; now Sucre), La Paz (1548), and Cochabamba (1571). From the 16th to the 18th century this central Andean area, known then as Charcas or Upper Peru, was one of the wealthiest and most densely populated centres of the Spanish empire. Its mines were supplied with mitas (conscripted groups) of Indian labourers from throughout the Andes, and by the mid-17th century Potosí’s population had reached some 160,000—a size comparable to that of the largest cities of Europe. This region fell into decay by the last quarter of the 18th century, however, largely because the richest and most accessible veins were exhausted.

Although Potosí continued to be Upper Peru’s most important economic centre, even after mining had declined, Chuquisaca was the intellectual and political focus of the area. Chuquisaca (also known, in the colonial period, as Charcas and La Plata and, since independence, as Sucre) served as the seat of Upper Peru’s government, which was known from its foundation in 1559 as the Audiencia of Charcas. The audiencia was first placed under the Viceroyalty of Peru at Lima, but in 1776 it was finally shifted to the new Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata established at Buenos Aires (now in Argentina). With its academies and universities, Chuquisaca was the major educational centre for the entire Río de la Plata region.

In the late 1770s and early ’80s, Indians in the highlands took part in widespread uprisings, most notably the revolt of Túpac Amaru II, which was carried out in the hope of reestablishing the Inca empire. These actions caused many casualties, and La Paz was besieged twice for several months, but eventually the rebel leaders were defeated and executed.

In 1809 Chuquisaca and La Paz became two of the earliest cities to rebel against the colonial government appointed by the new Napoleonic ruler of Spain. Many historians have considered this action to be the beginning of the wars of independence in Latin America. Although viceregal authorities in Lima quickly put down the rebellions, similar uprisings were successful in the viceregal capital of Buenos Aires. From that city several revolutionary armies were dispatched without success to liberate Upper Peru; however, the guerrilla units formed in the rugged countryside of Upper Peru kept the revolutionary movements alive for some 16 years. In 1825 an army under the leadership of Marshal Antonio José de Sucre liberated Upper Peru with the aid of defecting royalists, who were mostly Creole elites. The defectors convinced Simón Bolívar and Sucre to allow autonomy for Upper Peru rather than union with either Peru or Argentina, and on August 6, 1825, an Upper Peruvian congress declared the country independent. Few of the guerrilla commanders, representing a more humble constituency, were able to become part of the Creole elite-led government.

Bolivia from 1825 to c. 1930 In recognition of Bolívar’s support, congressional leaders named the new republic Bolivia in his honour, and they invited Sucre, his chief aide, to be the first president.

FOUNDATION AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD The new republic was not as viable as its leaders had fervently hoped it would be. Its economic growth was retarded, despite the region’s immense mineral wealth and its historical prominence, because the decline in mining during the 18th century had given way to severe depression resulting from the wars of independence. Between 1803 and 1825 silver production at Potosí declined by more than 80 percent, and, by the time the first national census was taken in 1846, the republic listed more than 10,000 abandoned mines.

Bolivia became known as one of the more backward of the new republics. It rapidly lost its economic standing within Spanish America to such previously marginal areas as the Río de la Plata region and Chile, which were forging ahead on the basis of meat and cereal production. Bolivia, on the other hand, was a net importer of basic foods, even those consumed exclusively by its Indian population. The Bolivian republic, with little trade to tax and few resources to export, instead relied on direct taxation of its Indian peasant masses, who made up more than two-thirds of the estimated 1,100,000 population in 1825. This regressive form of taxation was a major source of revenue until the last quarter of the 19th century.

Economic decline was mirrored by political conflicts and a disregard for democratic principles. Bolivia emerged with a series of military strongmen (caudillos), among whom was Marshal Andrés de Santa Cruz, president in 1829–39. Santa Cruz temporarily reorganized state finances in an effort to repair the war-torn economy, and he pursued policies of territorial expansion. In the 1830s he overthrew the Lima regime of General Agustín Gamarra and united Bolivia and Peru into a short-lived government known as the Confederation (1836–39). A combined force of Chileans and nationalistic Peruvians destroyed the Confederation, however, and Bolivia quickly turned in upon itself, abandoning further thoughts of regional dominance.

Over the next half-century the Bolivian government attempted to bring its own far-flung regions under centralized control, but Bolivia lacked the population and resources necessary to exploit its Amazonian and Pacific frontiers. Despite the enormous wealth in nitrates (notably saltpetre and guano) on the Bolivian Pacific coast, the country proved incapable of mining them, even with the help of foreign capital, mainly because Bolivia’s upper class remained committed to mining on the Altiplano. Instead, the nitrates were exploited by Peruvian, Chilean, North American, and British companies, and disputes over the taxation of exports led to the War of the Pacific.

LOSS OF THE COASTAL REGION From the 1840s, heavy Anglo-Chilean investments were made in nitrate mining on the Bolivian coast, beginning with the extraction of guano from the shoreline of Atacama province. Chile increasingly pressed territorial claims and obtained commercial concessions within Bolivia after nitrate deposits were discovered farther inland in the 1860s. Bolivia, responding to this pressure, signed a secret defense pact with Peru in 1873. The following year Bolivian-Chilean relations improved with a revised commercial treaty, but in 1878 the Bolivian government undermined the treaty by attempting to increase taxes on the Chilean-owned Compañía de Salitre (Saltpetre Company) operating in Bolivia, and tensions quickly escalated. Chilean forces occupied Antofagasta in February 1879 and quickly consolidated their hold on the surrounding Bolivian territory. Official declarations of war soon followed. In May 1880 Chilean forces landed at Ilo and Pacocha (both in Peru) and marched south, defeating a combined Bolivian-Peruvian army at the Battle of Tacna; the fall of Arica the next month signaled the end of effective resistance in the area. Rather than attacking directly inland through the treacherous Andes Mountains, the Chileans ignored Bolivia for the rest of the war and proceeded on an invasion of Peru, which resulted in their eventual capture of Lima and Arequipa.

The fall of the Pacific littoral to Chile may, in many ways, have been a blessing for Bolivia, as the defeats in 1880 marked a major turning point in national political history. Since the destruction of the Confederation, Bolivia had gone through one of the worst periods of 19th-century caudillo rule in all of Latin America. However, during the 1860s and ’70s, Andean silver mining had revived, as capital investments were made by Chilean and British investors; the international market for silver had also improved, and new technology was introduced. These conditions created substantial wealth for the mining elite, and, when barracks officers were discredited by the War of the Pacific, the new mining entrepreneurs captured political control of the country.

FORMATION OF LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE PARTIES Starting with the presidency (1880–84) of Narciso Campero, Bolivia moved into an era of civilian government. The country’s upper classes divided their support between two parties—Liberal and Conservative— and then proceeded to share power through them. This intraclass political party system finally brought Bolivia the stability it needed for economic development: though the parties split on issues such as anticlericalism, they were identical in their desire to promote economic growth. For two decades the country was ruled by the Conservatives, whose principal goal was to encourage the mining industry by developing an international rail network.

The Liberals thus inherited an economically expanding country when they seized power from the Conservatives in the so-called Federal Revolution of 1899. This revolt was supposedly instigated by those wishing to move the institutions of national government from Sucre (formerly Chuquisaca) to La Paz, but in reality it was primarily a power struggle between the Conservative and Liberal parties. Unfortunately for the Conservatives, their strength was too closely tied to the traditional Chuquisaca elite, much of which was identical to the silver-mining class. The Liberals, however, had the bulk of their strength in La Paz, which by this period was three times the size of Sucre and had the largest urban concentration—some 72,000 persons in a country of 1,700,000.

INCREASE IN TIN MINING The Liberal victory was also closely associated with a basic shift in the Altiplano mining economy. As the world silver market began to decline in the 1880s and early ’90s, mining operations began shifting to tin, which is found in association with silver, because tin was suddenly in demand by all the major industrialized countries. By 1900 tin completely superseded silver as Bolivia’s primary export, accounting for more than half of export earnings.

The shift to tin mining brought about a basic change within the Bolivian capitalist class. Whereas the silver-mining elite had been almost exclusively Bolivian, the new tin miners were far more cosmopolitan, including, in the early years, foreigners of all nationalities as well as some new Bolivian entrepreneurs. Tin mining itself absorbed far more capital and produced far more wealth than had the old silver-mining industry, and the new companies that emerged became complex international ventures directed by professional managers.

Given this new economic complexity and the political stability already achieved by the Conservatives and perpetuated by the Liberals, the tin-mining elite found it profitable to withdraw from direct involvement in national political life. Whereas Bolivian presidents under Conservative rule in the 19th century had been either silver magnates themselves (Gregorio Pacheco, 1884–88; Aniceto Arce, 1888–92) or closely associated with such magnates as partners or representatives (Mariano Baptista, 1892–96; Severo Fernández Alonso, 1896–99), the Liberals and subsequent 20th-century presidents were largely outside the mining elite. No tin magnate actively participated in leadership positions within the political system. Rather, they came to rely on a more effective system of pressure group politics.

LIBERAL RULE, 1899–1920 The primary tasks of the Liberal politicians, who ruled Bolivia until 1920 under the leadership of Ismael Montes (twice president: in 1904–08 and 1913–17), were to settle Bolivia’s chronic border problems and to expand the communications network initiated by the Conservatives. In 1904 a definitive peace treaty was signed with Chile, accepting the loss of all Bolivia’s former coastal territories. Also, a dispute with Brazil known as the Acre problem was resolved: this had involved an unsuccessful attempt by the central government to crush an autonomist rebellion (1889–1903) in the rubber-boom territory of Acre on the Brazilian border. Brazil’s covert support of the rebels and the defeat of Bolivian forces finally convinced the Liberals to sell the territory to Brazil in the Treaty of Petrópolis (1903). As a result of the financial indemnities provided by both treaties, Bolivia was able to finance a great era of railroad construction. By 1920 most of the major cities were linked by rail, and La Paz was connected to the two Chilean Pacific ports of Antofagasta and Arica; new lines had been begun or completed to Lake Titicaca, and thus to the Peruvian border, and to Tarija and the Argentine frontier.

The period of Liberal rule under President Montes was also the calmest in Bolivian political history, and the Liberals’ success led to the total collapse of the Conservative Party. Not until 1914 was an effective two-party system again established, when many of those outside of politics, along with a large number of new and younger elements, finally organized the Republican Party. Like its predecessors, the Republican Party was a white, upper- and middle-class grouping, with a fundamental belief in liberal and positivist ideologies.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY The abrasive quality of the strong-willed Montes and the disintegration of the ruling Liberal Party finally permitted the Republicans to stage a successful coup d’état in 1920 and become the ruling party. Upon achieving political power, however, the new party immediately split into two warring sections based on a personality conflict between two Montes-style politicians—Juan Bautista Saavedra, a La Paz lawyer who captured control of the Republican Party’s junta in 1920 and was national president from 1921 to 1925, and Daniel Salamanca, a Cochabamba landowner who took his following into a separate party, the so-called Genuine Republican Party, which was often supported in its activities by the Liberals. The rivalry between these two men became the dominant theme in Bolivian politics for the next decade, until the Salamanca forces captured the presidency.

Below the surface of this political battle of personalities, the national economy in the 1920s was undergoing serious change. A brilliant post-World War I recovery in the Bolivian tin-mining industry in the early years of the decade led by 1929 to the industry’s highest production figures. This enormous output occurred, however, in a period of steady price decline (a trend that continued long after the Great Depression of the 1930s). By 1930 the international tin market was in serious crisis, and Bolivian production suffered. The year 1930 also marked the end of major new capital investment in Bolivian tin mining; thereafter production costs rose higher and lower-grade ores were more often produced.

Bolivia from 1930 to c. 1980 The installation of Salamanca in the presidency after the revolt of 1930 seemingly involved little change in traditional Bolivian government. But because the Great Depression cut brutally into national income and forced a large part of the vital mining industry to close, Salamanca was forced to take new measures. When he attempted to manipulate the inflation rate, however, he ran into bitter hostility from the Liberal Party, which had been his key partner in the 1930 overthrow of the regular Republican Party. The conflict between these two forces in the central government led to a tense political climate, and Salamanca was forced to accept a Liberal veto over internal economic decisions. He refused, nevertheless, to permit the Liberals to join his cabinet; rather, he sought to overcome Liberal congressional control and to weaken growing strike movements by turning national attention to other themes. To this end, Salamanca had available the traditional recourse to patriotism and foreign war in the form of a long-standing border conflict with Paraguay.

In the mid-1920s Bolivia and Paraguay had each begun a major program of fort construction in the largely uninhabited and poorly demarcated Chaco Boreal territory on Bolivia’s southeastern frontier. At the height of the Depression, Salamanca advocated an even heavier armament and fortification program and secured major European loans. A border incident developed between the two states in June 1932, and Salamanca deliberately provoked a full-scale Bolivian reprisal, which led to open war between the two countries.

THE CHACO WAR AND MILITARY RULE The Chaco War was a long and costly disaster for Bolivia. In three years of bitter fighting on its southeastern frontiers, Bolivia sustained some 57,000 deaths, and it lost far more territory than Paraguay had claimed even in its most extreme prewar demands. The fact that Bolivia had entered the war with a better equipped and supposedly far better trained army only aggravated the sense of frustration among the younger literate veterans—the so-called Chaco generation—at the total failure of Bolivian arms. Charging that the traditional politicians and the international oil companies had led Bolivia into its disastrous war, the returning veterans set up rival socialist and radical parties and challenged the traditional political system.

The initial result of this challenge was the overthrow of civilian rule and the first military government in Bolivia since 1880. In 1936 the younger army officers seized the government, and, under the leadership of Colonel David Toro in 1936–37 and Major Germán Busch in 1937–39, they tried to reform Bolivian society. During this so-called era of military socialism the Standard Oil Company holdings were confiscated, an important labour code was created, and an advanced, socially oriented constitution was written in 1938; yet little else was changed.

THE RISE OF NEW POLITICAL GROUPS AND THE BOLIVIAN NATIONAL REVOLUTION Civilian dissident groups finally began to organize themselves into powerful national opposition parties in the 1940s. The two most important of these were the middle-class and initially fascist-oriented Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario; MNR) and the Marxist and largely pro-Soviet Party of the Revolutionary Left (Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria; PIR). Both groups established important factions in the national congress of 1940–44. In 1943 the civilian president General Enrique Peñaranda was overthrown by a secret military group, Reason for the Fatherland (Razón de Patria; RADEPA). RADEPA allied itself with the MNR and tried to create a new-style government under Colonel Gualberto Villaroel (1943–46), but little was accomplished except for the MNR’s political mobilization of the Indian peasants. Opposed as fascist-oriented by the right and left, the Villaroel government was overthrown in 1946 in a bloody revolution in which Villaroel was hanged in front of the presidential palace.

During the next few years the PIR tried to rule in alliance with many of the older parties but failed. It was eventually dissolved and replaced in early 1950 by the more radical Bolivian Communist Party; meanwhile, the more conservative parties proved unable to tame their rivals. After the MNR won a plurality victory in the presidential elections of 1951, the military intervened directly and formed a junta government. The MNR’s disaster under Villaroel led the party to dissociate itself from its fascist wing; instead, it forged an alliance with a small Trotskyite party that had important mine-union support. The alliance brought the labour leader Juan Lechín into the MNR. After several unsuccessful revolts, each more violent than the preceding one, the MNR finally overthrew the military regime in April 1952. During this struggle armed workers, civilians, and peasants almost totally destroyed the army.

April 1952 thus marks the beginning of the so-called Bolivian National Revolution, which became one of Latin America’s most influential social upheavals. That year, universal suffrage was granted with the abolition of literacy requirements. Moreover, the MNR and its mine-worker and peasant supporters were pledged to a fundamental attack on the tin-mining elite and its allied political supporters. In October 1952 the three largest tin-mining companies were nationalized, and one of the most far-reaching land-reform decrees ever enacted in the Western Hemisphere came into effect in August 1953. Not only were Indians granted land, freed from servile labour obligations, and granted the right to vote, but they were also given large supplies of arms. From that point on, the Indian peasants of Bolivia became a powerful, if largely passive, political force upon which all subsequent governments based their strength.

POST-1952 REGIMES The most important leader of the MNR, Víctor Paz Estenssoro, was president of Bolivia in 1952–56 and instituted the most revolutionary part of the party’s program. In 1956 he was replaced by the more conservative Hernando (Hernán) Siles Zuazo, whose primary concern was to stop inflation, which had completed the revolutionary process by virtually destroying the older middle-class supporters of the MNR. Siles initiated an economic program, with massive financial support from the United States, that brought inflation under control; at the same time, he also suspended most of the advanced social programs of the revolution. The government ended worker coadministration of the nationalized mine companies and cut back on social services. It also invited North American petroleum companies back into Bolivia for the first time since 1937, when Standard Oil of Bolivia had been confiscated by the Toro government.

When Paz Estenssoro returned to the presidency in 1960, he further consolidated the achievements of Siles and revived, with U.S. support, the power of the army. Paz Estenssoro’s attempt in 1964 to renew his presidential term for another four years splintered and temporarily destroyed the MNR, however, and the military overthrew his government.

RETURN TO MILITARY RULE With the support of many conservatives and the peasant masses, the vice president, General René Barrientos, seized the government and proceeded to dissolve most of the organized labour opposition, marking the beginning of a string of military leaders. From 1964 until his death in 1969, Barrientos continued with the process of conservative economic reform and political retrenchment, and he attempted to demobilize all popular groups except the peasants, who had gained some power as a result of the National Revolution. Partly because of that empowerment, the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara failed to mobilize peasants in a remote region of the country, and in 1967 his poorly organized guerrillas were destroyed by units of the Bolivian Armed Forces, who had been trained by the U.S. military and supported by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The death of Barrientos in early 1969 brought the vice president, Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas, into office; he was forcibly replaced in midyear by General Alfredo Ovando Candía, who nationalized Gulf Oil Company holdings. Ovando was in turn forced out of office in October 1970 by the more radical General Juan José Torres. Of the several military regimes that governed between 1964 and 1979, that led by Torres was the most radical; for a time the Torres government replaced Congress with a workers’ soviet. In 1971 Torres was replaced by Col. Hugo Banzer Suárez, and the most repressive regime of the period came to power. During the next seven years the government suppressed the labour movement, sent troops to occupy the mines, suspended all civil rights, and prohibited the peasant syndicates. Nevertheless, this was also an era of unprecedented economic growth in Bolivia, fueled by a sudden increase in world mineral prices and the completion of some of the basic social and economic changes that had begun with the National Revolution of 1952. Paramount among these changes were the relative decline of the importance of tin and the emergence of commercial agricultural exports for the first time in Bolivian republican history. It was also a period when the national population increased rapidly, achieving between 1950 and 1976 an annual net growth rate of 2.1 percent. Finally, the Banzer regime was unique in contemporary Bolivian affairs because it gave national representation to the new commercial agricultural interests of the Santa Cruz region.

Bolivia from c. 1980 to 2000 TRANSITION TO CIVILIAN RULE Between 1978 and 1982 there were 10 governments in Bolivia, including several periods of military rule. The old MNR reemerged in 1978, and a complex set of new political parties and movements developed. These new groups gained wide support in the national elections of 1978 and 1979, and the electorate showed an even balance between conservative and radical positions. Moreover, peasants for the first time no longer voted as a bloc but were as equally divided as the urban populace.

Popular opposition had forced Banzer to call elections in 1978, which were subsequently voided in the wake of charges of fraud, and Banzer resigned under threat of a coup. Walter Guevara Arce was elected president by Congress in August 1979, but he stepped down in November after a failed coup, whereupon Lidia Gueiler Tejada was chosen by military, political, and union leaders to serve as interim president, becoming the first woman to hold the country’s highest office. In July 1980, before Congress could choose a new president, the military staged a bloody coup, during which one of the country’s most acclaimed authors and political leaders, Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, was murdered. Over the next 13 months an extremist military government led by General Luis García Meza committed widespread murders, incidents of torture, forced exiles, and political persecution. The government hired militant fascists (including ex-Nazis) and other paramilitary groups to attack opposition political and labour leaders, and corruption was widespread among military officers.

The new regime immediately lost credibility in the international community because of its repressive measures and because U.S. officials implicated some of its leaders in illegal cocaine trafficking; because of these illicit ties, García Meza’s coup has become known as the “cocaine coup.” Years later Luis Arce Gómez, who had served as minister of the interior under García Meza, was convicted in Miami, Florida, on cocaine trafficking charges, and in 1995 García Meza himself was extradited to Bolivia from Brazil and convicted.

RESTORATION OF CIVILIAN GOVERNMENT García Meza resigned in August 1981, faced with widespread opposition, domestic and international condemnation, and a deteriorating economy. Congress was reinstated, and in 1982 it returned Hernando Siles Zuazo to the presidency; Jaime Paz Zamora became vice president. During the next year Siles wrestled with disagreements within the ruling government coalition, heavy deficits incurred by the state mining company Comibol, and social unrest, all of which contributed to the collapse of the economy and a breakup of the ruling coalition. When Siles stepped down in 1985, a year before the expiration of his term, hyperinflation was at unprecedented levels, the economy was in shambles with banks virtually shut down, state mines were suffering enormous losses, and the industrial sector was at the edge of collapse. In addition, unusually strong El Niño weather patterns caused disastrous crop failures. With the legitimate economy failing, cocaine trafficking became a major source of foreign exchange; the government, because of its lack of resources and the strong opposition it faced from coca leaf farmers, was unable to curtail the trafficking. Despite all his government’s failings, however, his main legacy was to turn over power to a democratically elected president.

In the peaceful elections of 1985 the Nationalist Democratic Action (Acción Democrática Nacionalista; ADN), led by Banzer, narrowly edged out Paz Estenssoro’s party, the MNR, but, with the acquiescence of Banzer, Paz Estenssoro was elected president by Congress. The new president implemented drastic economic reforms to end the country’s hyperinflation, which by then was the highest in the world. He greatly devalued the Bolivian peso while increasing gasoline prices, freezing wages, and eliminating price supports. The country’s conservative government also shut down most of its tin mines and laid off some four-fifths of the miners in response to a sharp drop in international tin prices and Comibol’s large deficits. To quell a general strike and the mobilization of miners, the government temporarily sent dozens of labour leaders to detention centres in the Bolivian tropics. Overall, however, there was little actual violence, despite the tremendous social and economic upheaval caused by the economic reform programs. To carry out the economic reforms, Paz Estenssoro formed an alliance with General Banzer and his party. During this period Paz Estenssoro dismantled the state mining company, which he had helped set up after the 1952 revolution, and he opened up the economy to foreign investors.

The new president held to his plan in the face of public pressure, and after several months the Bolivian economy began to recover, as its ruinous hyperinflation rate was reduced. Although this was an encouraging step, Bolivia still faced numerous debilitating problems, particularly unemployment; under an emergency employment program, work was provided for tens of thousands of unemployed miners.

The government’s difficult fight against the large underground cocaine economy was somewhat strengthened, partly as a result of pressure from the United States. Actions taken—with the aid of U.S. troops and helicopters—included the eradication of illegal crops and processing laboratories and the implementation of a program of crop substitution.

In the May 1989 presidential elections the main candidates were Banzer, Paz Zamora, and Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada Bustamente, a newcomer to national politics. Sánchez de Lozada, a philosophy graduate of the University of Chicago and owner of the profitable COMSUR mining company, had assisted with the economic reforms in 1985 under Paz Estenssoro. Sánchez de Lozada and the MNR came in first in the popular vote but did not receive an absolute majority, whereupon Congress again selected the president. Paz Zamora, with his Movement of the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria; MIR), unexpectedly secured the presidency by forming a coalition government with Banzer’s ADN. In most respects, Paz Zamora continued his predecessor’s policies, except for a new emphasis on national production of food and raw materials and negotiations with Brazil on the construction of a natural gas pipeline. Under the threat of losing U.S. aid, Paz Zamora also continued to help fight the drug trade.

In the 1993 presidential election, Sánchez de Lozada and the MNR won a plurality, and, in order to ensure his selection by Congress, he formed an alliance with the Solidarity and Civic Union (Unidad Cívica Solidaridad; UCS). Sánchez de Lozada soon initiated a privatization and capitalization program that brought huge amounts of investment capital into the economy. The government sold its controlling interests in electrical energy, transportation, communication, hydrocarbon, and airline companies to foreign partners; the remaining government stake in these companies was transferred to a new national pension fund system. Sánchez de Lozada also finalized an agreement with Brazil for the construction of a major natural gas pipeline (opened in 1999) between Santa Cruz and São Paulo, Brazil, and this undertaking in turn stimulated foreign investment in the petrochemical industry. The reorganization of the pension fund system also removed widespread corruption and inefficiency from the government bureaucracy. Sánchez de Lozada ended his term in 1997 with a growing economy, increased foreign investment, and reduced coca leaf cultivation and drug trafficking.

Elections in 1997 gave Banzer a plurality of the vote, and he emerged victorious in the Congressional decision through the support of the UCS and the populist Conscience of Nationhood (Conciencia de Patria; Condepa) party, which was led by Carlos Palenque, a popular radio and television talk-show host. The new government intensified the war on drugs and furthered its predecessors’ efforts toward economic development. Banzer resigned before the end of his term, which Vice Pres. Jorge Quiroga completed.

Bolivia in the 21st century Sánchez de Lozada won the 2002 presidential elections; however, his term was plagued by a recession and peasant protests. Violence escalated between armed peasants and police in February 2003, resulting in the deaths of 30 people and leading to the temporary toppling of Sánchez de Lozada’s government. More protests later that year demanding nationalization of the country’s natural gas resources reignited social unrest and brought about even more deaths. Sánchez de Lozada was finally forced to resign in October 2003 and was replaced by Vice Pres. Carlos Mesa Gisbert. Mesa’s decision to revise the hydrocarbon law for natural gas deposits did not forestall violent demonstrations, and he, too, resigned.

On Dec. 18, 2005, amid continuing protests, Juan Evo Morales Ayma was elected as Bolivia’s first Indian president. A founder of the left-wing political party Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo; MAS) and a former coca-growers’ union leader, Morales fought for more rights for indigenous communities, for less-harsh restrictions on coca farmers, and for more taxes on the wealthy. In 2006 he nationalized Bolivia’s gas fields and oil industry, and in 2007 he announced plans to nationalize the country’s railroads and mines. In response to Morales’s reforms and his attempts to redistribute wealth in the country, four of Bolivia’s wealthier provinces overwhelmingly approved regional autonomy statutes in referenda, though these were not recognized by the central government. There were political demonstrations, some of which turned violent, by those who opposed Morales’s reforms and by his supporters. A recall referendum on Morales’s leadership was held in August 2008, and two-thirds of those who went to the polls voted for him to continue in office. In another referendum held in January 2009, voters approved a new constitution that would allow Morales to seek a second consecutive five-year term (previously the constitution limited the president to a single term) and give him the power to dissolve Congress. Other changes to the constitution furthered indigenous rights, strengthened state control over the country’s natural resources, and enforced a limit on the size of private landholdings. Most Bolivians in the wealthier eastern provinces of the country opposed ratification of the new constitution.

Under Morales the country remained politically divided between the wealthy provinces and the impoverished indigenous communities. On the other hand, inflation had been brought under control, the economy was growing faster than the regional average, and the Bolivian peso, renamed the boliviano, was stabilized. In April 2009 Morales signed a law authorizing early presidential and legislative elections, set to take place that December. Morales, with the continued support of the indigenous majority, easily won a second term in the country’s presidential election. In the concurrent legislative elections, the MAS gained the majority of seats in both houses of Congress. In his second term Morales presided over an economy buoyed by a surging natural gas market, and he initiated a broad range of infrastructure projects. In 2013 the Bolivian constitutional court ruled that Morales could run for a third presidential term, and the following year he claimed victory in the first round of elections.

Disclaimer

This is not the official site of this country. Most of the information in this site were taken from the U.S. Department of State, The Central Intelligence Agency, The United Nations, [1],[2], [3], [4], [5],[6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14],[15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24],[25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30],[31], [32], [33], [34], and the [35].

Other sources of information will be mentioned as they are posted.