Bolivia: A 21st-century revolution

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Notes

1. [Gilly's words here are violencia popular. It would be misleading to render this, however (especially to US readers), by a phrase like “mass violence” because, as is evident in what follows, the actual application of deadly force in these confrontations came almost entirely from the direction of the State.]

2. [Led by the MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario) in response to the government's veto to its victory in the 1951 election, the 1952 Revolution was supported by a broad-based alliance of the progressive elements of the professional class, intellectuals and students, organized labor and landless peasants. With the crucial support of workers' militias, the MNR established a revolutionary government that nationalized without compensation the foreign-owned mining industry, conferred improvements in wages and benefits for workers, enacted a substantial land reform, and severely constrained the power of the armed forces. The US policy of “constructive engagement” with the MNR regime strengthened the party's conservative fraction, which progressively took control of the process and by the late 1960s managed to reverse the revolutionary conquests of the 1950s.]

3. [The State and Revolution, Chapter III, Section 1.]

4. [Gilly's play on words, tratar con lo intratable, resists direct translation.]