ABSTRACT
The Bolivian revolution of 1952 was a turning point in the country’s history. The revolutionary upheaval in the countryside resulted in one of the most drastic agrarian reforms in Latin America. Together with the Cuban revolution of 1959, it signalled an era of land reforms throughout most of Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. Almost half a century had elapsed since the Mexican revolution of 1910–1917, in which the peasantry were major protagonists, before they were able again to overturn the traditional landlord system but this time in Bolivia. However, Bolivia’s agrarian reform of 1953 generated highly contradictory processes whose consequences have assumed dramatic proportions in recent years. Despite Bolivia’s long history of agrarian reform, the land question is at the centre of the contemporary political debate like in no other Latin American country, especially since the early 1990s when the land issue became enmeshed with the ethnic and indigenous question. This chapter explores the various forces unleashed by the agrarian reform, some paradoxical and conflicting, which have subsequently led to the design of a so-called ‘second agrarian reform’ in the 1990s which, however, was never fully implemented. It also seeks to explain the reasons for the persistent rural poverty and the renewed relevance of the land question in Bolivia. The chapter closes with some reflections on the whole process started by the 1952 revolution as well as a few recommendations for a development strategy capable of dealing with the land and poverty problems.
