Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London/David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studiesby Merilee Grindle;

University of Calgary PressCanadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective Institute of Latin AmericanStudies, University of London/David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies byMerilee Grindle; Pilar DomingoReview by: Eric HershbergCanadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des étudeslatino-américaines et caraïbes, Vol. 30, No. 59 (2005), pp. 206-208Published by: University of Calgary Press on behalf of Canadian Association of Latin American andCaribbean StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41800258 .

Accessed: 18/06/2014 15:44

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

University of Calgary Press and Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies arecollaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Latin American andCaribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.223 on Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:44:21 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucalgp

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=calacs

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=calacs

http://www.jstor.org/stable/41800258?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


206 CJLACS / RCELAC 30/59 2005

Merilee Grindle and Pilar Domingo, editors Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London/ David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003, xiv + 424 pp.

Eric Hershberg , Princeton University and Social Science Research Council

Hardly any festivities marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Bolivian Revo- lution, a striking silence that provides the point of departure for Merilee Grindle's introduction to this thoughtful and carefully edited collection of essays by scholars from Bolivia, the United States, and the United King- dom. Their nuanced interpretations of the origins, impact, and legacies of the events that unfolded in April 1952 enable readers to understand how such an apparently pivotal event in a nation's history could pass relatively unnoticed by contemporary public opinion. The Revolution delivered on far fewer of its promises than its protagonists might have imagined in their more idealistic moments, or than recent generations of Bolivians would justifiably wish. Bolivia's poverty rates continue to exceed those of any other South American Republic, and authoritarian and clientelist practices often intensified rather than diminished in the aftermath of the MNR's (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario) triumph. Today, still bereft of effective and broadly legitimate institutions, Bolivia is rife with conflicts that threaten to render it ungovernable by any of its competing factions.

Contributors to this book contend, nonetheless, that the 1952 Revolu- tion had transformative and, in many respects, positive impacts on Boliv- ian society. Their analyses highlight numerous ways in which the Revolu- tion freed Bolivia from important constraints of its past while setting in train social and political dynamics that shaped the nation's trajectory for the ensuing half century. Readers of this volume will likely conclude, moreo- ver, that some of the more promising features of the contemporary land- scape in Bolivia - isolated pockets of economic dynamism and record high levels of primary school enrolment, to cite but two examples - are at least indirectly attributable to the Revolution and its aftermath.

Aside from the clear and cogent introductory and conclusion essays, written respectively by editors Grindle and Domingo, the book's 13 core chapters are divided into four cohesive sections. First, three chapters ex- plore the degree to which what took place in Bolivia in 1952 can indeed be classified appropriately as a revolution. Drawing on the comparative literature on the topic, Laurence Whitehead establishes persuasively that the MNR



Reviews / Recensions 207

triumph meets the requisite criteria: its decisive defeat of the oligarchy and its success - highly unusual for Latin America - in imposing a meaningful and enduring agrarian reform stand out as especially significant achieve- ments. Subsequent essays in this section situate the 1952 upheaval in the context of twentieth-century Latin America - Alan Knight's comparison with the Mexican Revolution is a splendid read - and consider the various factors that motivated the US government to assume a less aggressive coun- ter-reformist posture in Bolivia than it did elsewhere in the hemisphere.

The remaining three sections cluster essays that share a common tem- poral focus. Thus, four nicely crafted contributions by historians analyze the Revolution's roots in Bolivia's past and consider the degree to which 1952 constituted a qualitative break from established trajectories of nation building and identity formation. These chapters also introduce several themes that resonate powerfully for observers of contemporary Bolivian reality: struggles to democratize access to basic education, to articulate highly lo- calized expressions of collective identity, or to situate Bolivia vis-à-vis the larger Latin American and international contexts turn out to have been as significant during the decades prior to the 1952 Revolution as they are un- der vastly different circumstances today.

The impact of the Revolution on Bolivia's subsequent half century of development is the focus of a third section of the book. Addressing economic performance, social structure, and educational reform, these three chapters complement one another nicely, even while reaching somewhat contrasting conclusions. The noted Bolivian economist Juan Antonio Mo- rales offers a scathing assessment of the economic legacy of the Revolu- tion, which he sees not only as having failed to overcome poverty and in- equality, but also as having bequeathed a culture of paternalism and dependency that left the country unprepared to compete in an environment of unprecedented economic integration. Nonetheless, as Herbert Klein documents in his evaluation of social change during the second half of the twentieth century, Bolivia did manage to eke out substantial gains in living conditions, if not inequalities, and in this as in other respects, does not differ dramatically from the continent as a whole.

The concluding section considers a series of pending issues, encompassing the political system, policy-making processes, and the ongoing yet insufficiently studied innovations designed to foster more participatory approaches to governance in Bolivia. Here as elsewhere in the book, the authors draw on a wealth of knowledge of Bolivian affairs and engagement with the broader social science literature to interpret complex processes that are invariably in flux. They are not hesitant to shed light on meaningful signs of progress where these are evident. Nonetheless, Eduardo



208 CJLACS / RCELAC 30/59 2005

Gamarra's perceptive account of the obstacles to effective political repre- sentation and stable governance stands out, ultimately, as highly pessimis- tic. His is a sobering reminder that, however ambitious the aspirations of Bolivians who made the revolution 50 years ago, the tasks facing their de- scendants are, if anything, more daunting.

Eric Van Young The Other Rebellion: Popular Violence, Ideology, and the Mexican Struggle for Independence, 1810-1821 Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001, xvii + 702 pp.

Christon I. Archer , University of Calgary

Those readers tempted to complain about the length of Van Young's revi- sionist study of the Mexican Independence epoch might recall that Lucas Alamán needed five volumes, Carlos Maria Bustamante three volumes, and Julio de Zárate an even longer 810 pages to cover the same topic. Of course, these earlier authors wrote about the "origiňal" rebellion culminating in the War of Independence in New Spain from approaches and perspectives quite different from those of Van Young. Although they touched upon elements of the "other rebellion" (that is, the popular struggles encompassing a di- verse set of actors and demands in the rural areas), they focused much more on the patriot and royalist leadership, the creole political machinations, and the broader implications of rebellion viewed from the military, urban, cen- tral, and imperial perspectives.

For uninitiated readers, Van Young's study may be challenging. How- ever, the book offers a bold and complex study of rebellion at the local and district levels, presenting readers with the raw materials needed to deter- mine what motivated village people to rebel. What emerges is a strikingly different interpretation whose novel conclusions will influence future research on the Independence epoch of New Spain.

From the depth of archival sources drawn upon and the nature of the arguments presented, it is obvious that Van Young spent years grappling with village records, criminal and civil cases, and an enormous volume of detailed dispatches and correspondence by military officials, clergymen, district administrators, and ordinary people. In many districts, the origins of unrest were murky, convoluted, and had much to do with land issues, the success or failure of harvests, and the roles of the village cura (curate) in



Documents

Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London/David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studiesby Merilee Grindle;