Book Review: From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era

Abstract

In the early 1960s US policy-makers made economic and military aid to Bolivia dependent on the country accepting a stabilisation programme known as the Triangular Plan which was designed to 'rationalise' the tin mining industry by cutting costs, but which also aimed to eliminate the threat of the left in the labour movement, particularly in the mining unions. [...]Paz Estenssoro's third run for president, his frequent suspension of constitutional rights, and increasingly violent repression created opposition on both Left and Right that resulted in a military coup on 3 November 1964. [...]recently many historians believed that the US government was behind the coup. [...]since Colonel Edward Fox was such an important actor in the story, and according to some historians the person who encouraged Barrientos to lead a military coup, I was surprised to know that Field apparently had a strong personal connection to Fox and his family.

Thomas C. Field , Jr. , From Development to Dictatorship: Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era (Ithaca, NY, and London : Cornell University Press , 2014), pp. xix + 272, $45.00, hb.

Reviews

From Development to Dictatorship has many virtues. It is a meticulously researched history of US intervention in a Latin American country in the Cold War era. It provides new information on, and a new interpretation of, the 1964 military coup that overthrew the presidency of Víctor Paz Estenssoro, one of the leaders of Bolivia's 1952 national revolution. It is a case study of the involvement of the US government (including the CIA, USAID and State Department) in a small country that was not of apparent significance to most US citizens. This is highly relevant today as observers attempt to untangle the country's ever more complex interventions around the world. And it is a refreshing corrective to the misuse of the term 'liberal', which Field demonstrates does not mean politically 'progressive' in the sense of supporting human or labour rights or favouring social democratic reforms.

The Alliance for Progress was a US aid programme inaugurated after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 ostensibly to foster development in Latin America in an effort to make socialism appear less attractive. In addition to development, during the era of the Alliance for Progress the United States actively armed many of Latin America's militaries to make them better able to defeat leftist insurgencies should the development practices fail to win heart and minds. In From Development to Dictatorship Field shows that the Kennedy administration decided it could work with the government of Bolivia even though after the 1952 Revolution it had enacted a significant agrarian reform and the country's tin mines had been nationalised. Although, on the face of it, Bolivia's post-1952 reforms did not differ that greatly from those in Guatemala in 1954 under Jacobo Arbenz, US policy-makers gauged the leaders of the Bolivian Revolution, especially Víctor Paz Estenssoro and Hernán Siles Suazo, to be far more amenable to State Department blandishments and coercion than was the government of Arbenz who was overthrown in a US organised coup. Kennedy liberals managed to build up the Bolivian military and create the conditions for a coup, all the while supporting Paz's supposedly democratic administration. Field clearly shows that authoritarianism and liberalism are not incompatible, at least in small countries that are dependent on US aid.

In the early 1960s US policy-makers made economic and military aid to Bolivia dependent on the country accepting a stabilisation programme known as the Triangular Plan which was designed to 'rationalise' the tin mining industry by cutting costs, but which also aimed to eliminate the threat of the left in the labour movement, particularly in the mining unions. The 1952 victory of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario had been made possible through a coalition of centrist modernisers like Paz Estenssoro and more radical workers from the unions, members of the Bolivian Communist Party and the Trotskyist Revolutionary Workers Party (POR). President Paz in his second term (1960-64), while still making nationalist gestures internationally, was eager to find a way to neutralise the left that had been instrumental in bringing him to power and the US saw Bolivia as a test case for promoting development while destroying the appeal of socialism. The Triangular Plan made aid contingent on reducing the work force of the country's tin mines by 20 per cent, removing radical leaders from their positions and severely curtailing workers' control of COMIBOL (the nationalised mining industry).

Field shows that the linchpin of the US strategy in Bolivia in the first half of the 1960s under both ambassadors Ben Stephansky and Douglas Henderson was to build up the military (with infusions of weapons supplied through USAID), particularly supporting General Rene Barrientos who was popular with rural people in his native state of Cochabamba. As development funds were channelled through the military, the peasants increasingly saw the armed forces as their allies and in many cases were ready to join with them to combat the radical miners. This relationship was codified in the Pacto Militar-Campesino (Military-Peasant Pact) in 1964. Using US extensive government correspondence Field demonstrates that the policy of US liberals included the military attacks on mining camps to remove radical leaders and to put down workers' demonstrations against wage cuts, firings and withholding of food from the COMIBOL commissaries (an action supported by the US representatives). Even CIA Station Chief Larry Sternfield found the unbridled brutality of Paz's chief of Police, Claudio San Román, distasteful, yet he cynically reported that 'Uncle Sam' said it was all in the interest of democracy.

In the end Paz Estenssoro's third run for president, his frequent suspension of constitutional rights, and increasingly violent repression created opposition on both Left and Right that resulted in a military coup on 3 November 1964. Until recently many historians believed that the US government was behind the coup. Field's research shows quite conclusively that although air attaché Colonel Edward Fox (who was an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency) was close to Barrientos and might have encouraged him to seize power, the rest of the US actors in Bolivia clung to Paz Estenssoro. His authoritarianism and determination to bring the miners under control was as good as a military coup, and the United States feared possible leftist intervention in the instability that might follow a coup. US policy helped create the conditions for a coup but representatives in Bolivia continued to believe that with significant deliveries of US arms Paz could weather the storm.

This book is an important contribution to Bolivian history post-1952, a detailed elaboration of US intentions and actions during the Alliance for Progress, and an important revision of our understanding of the military coup of 1964. It should be very instructive to students of US foreign policy everywhere as an alternative model of US subversion and intervention under an avowedly liberal government. Field has mined US and Bolivia archives, as well as sources in other countries, although there is most reliance on the US materials. He has also done extensive interviews with many of the people he writes about. Although Field is careful to tell both sides of the story, and the whole book is an exposé of liberal foreign policy, there were a few tendencies in the narrative that made me wonder if he was not overly influenced by his US, or Cold War, sources. One was frequent references to various actors as Communists with a capital 'C', when it was not clear to me that they were actually members of the PCB. Another was to call the House Wives' Committee of the Siglo XX mining camp a 'Communist Front'. Finally, since Colonel Edward Fox was such an important actor in the story, and according to some historians the person who encouraged Barrientos to lead a military coup, I was surprised to know that Field apparently had a strong personal connection to Fox and his family.