Bolivia:
Processes of Change
By John Crabtree and Ann Chaplin
Zed Books
Pbck. £14.99
This is another extremely useful contribution by Zed Books
to our understanding of the recent transformations sweeping Latin
America.
Bolivia
is Latin America’s poorest country, despite possessing a
wealth of raw materials, from silver, tin and hydro-carbon deposits. These resources
have been exploited over centuries by first the Spanish colonialists, then by
multi-nationals with the connivance of local oligarchs, leaving the
overwhelmingly indigenous population barely surviving in dire poverty. It has,
like its neighbours, seen numerous governmental changes over the decades:
military coups and dictatorships which represented merely a change of
exploiting group. However, with the election of the first indigenous president,
Evo Morales, in 2006, real change became possible. He is a former union leader
and avowed socialist, determined to radically transform his country, giving
indigenous people greater autonomy and control over their lives for the first
time and nationalising much of the country’s mineral wealth resources.
Crabtree and Chaplin know the country well and have
conducted independent research, including hundreds of interviews with ordinary
people, grass-roots leaders, trade unionists and indigenous groups, and have
used these as a basis for their illuminating description of what has been
taking place under Morales’s presidency.
What the book clearly explains is how the complex ethnic
make up of the country, its history of dictatorships, trade union militancy and
popular revolt, overlaying class conflict, makes the implementation of
effective and democratic change extremely difficult.
It is a book which will be of vital importance for those
with a deeper interest in Latin America and Bolivia,
but for a general reader it conveys a fascinating picture of the historical
development and contemporary change in this little-known, land-locked Andean
country.
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