The General’s Revolution: (Mis)encounters between social movements and the Bolivian military government after the 1964 coup

Authors

  • Guilherme Andrade PUC Rio

Keywords:

Latin America, social movements, labor unions, Bolivia, Cold War

Abstract

The article aims to investigate the relationship between the Bolivian military government, established after a coup in 1964, and social movement, in special unionized workers in mining and rural areas. The way labor movements in the mining sector have been persecuted contrasts heavily with the support shown by peasant organizations, held by the promise of land redistribution in the rural area. However, the way the military have associated the fulfillment of the agrarian reform to the repression of popular radicalism poses a different perspective from those upheld by the originators of the reform, the government of the 1952 National Revolution. The manner social movements, due to the major role they played on the episode, came to be included in political calculation had resulted on a complex, and continuous, process of negotiation among social identities. Approaching this process as an historical object through a relational outlook, instead of reducing it to the Cold War conjunctural framework, allows us to address the articulations drawn by social actors, regarding the terms on how they may be seen or heard inside the public debate.

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Published

2021-12-31