Description
Book SynopsisA study of United States-Bolivian in the post-World War II era. Explores attempts by Bolivian revolutionary leaders to both secure United States assistance and to obtain time and space to develop their policies and plans.
Trade Review“James Siekmeier has produced a model of scholarship in this concise analysis of U.S. relations with Bolivia from the Revolution of 1952 to the present. With superb multi-archival research in Bolivia and the United States, Siekmeier demonstrates the multifaceted nature of the bilateral relationship. The United States deployed economic and military aid to contain the Bolivian Revolution, even as Bolivian officials skillfully channeled the aid for their own purposes. Siekmeier’s fascinating discussions of the joint campaign to capture Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara in 1967 and Bolivia’s decision to expel the Peace Corps in 1971 further reveal the complex nature of U.S. interactions with Bolivia.”
—Stephen G. Rabe,University of Texas at Dallas
“This book is a welcome update to the history of Bolivian-U.S. relations. . . . [It] updates scholarship on Bolivian-U.S. relations in three ways. First, it takes advantage of more recent scholarship and declassified documents to examine foreign relations in the 1970s. Second, it does an excellent job of treating the cultural, social, and political transformation of Bolivia between 1952 and the present. Finally, this book gives perhaps the definitive word on the Bolivian Revolution and shows how that seminal event affected relations between the United States and Bolivia through the 1970s.”
—Robert O. Kirkland American Historical Review
“Siekmeier reveals how the Bolivian leadership shrewdly played on Washington’s desire to demonstrate that it could partner successfully with socially progressive governments and manipulated Washington’s anticommunist impulses by warning that the new government’s collapse could create opportunities for unpredictable far-left forces. Siekmeier’s narrative includes an interesting profile of the charming Bolivian diplomat Victor Andrade, who cunningly translated his nation’s politics into terms that Washington officials and pundits could comprehend.”
—Richard Feinberg Foreign Affairs
“The book is a valuable contribution to the historiography on the Bolivian Revolution, US–Bolivian relations, and US relations with Latin America, and should compel a rethinking of several long-held assumptions.”
—Kevin Young Bulletin of Latin American Research
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 .The Early Years
2. The Bolivian Revolution and the United States
3. The Splintering of the Revolution
4. The Rebellion in the Countryside
5. Bolivia’s Line in the Sand
6. The Revolution’s Long Shadow
Conclusion: Another Round of Tension
Appendix: U.S. Economic Assistance to Bolivia
Bibliography
Index
