The Bolivian National Revolution

In May 1951 the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) won the most votes in Bolivia's election, but a military junta annulled it. On April 9, 1952, MNR militants, police and armed miners rose in La Paz and fought the army for three days. The army was defeated and Victor Paz Estenssoro, the MNR leader, returned from exile to become president. Bolivia's revolution was one of the most far-reaching in Latin America.¹

Bolivia's economy depended on tin, controlled by three companies owned by the Patino, Hochschild and Aramayo families, while most Indigenous people lived on large estates under feudal-like labor obligations. After the Chaco War, reformist soldiers, miners and middle-class radicals built new movements. The MNR joined forces with the mine workers' union under Juan Lechin, which supplied the arms and fighters that won in 1952. The new government granted universal suffrage in July 1952, removing the literacy and property requirements that had excluded most Indigenous Bolivians. It nationalized the three big tin companies on October 31, 1952 and created the state mining corporation COMIBOL. In August 1953 an agrarian reform ended the hacienda labor system and distributed land. The revolution later lost momentum amid inflation, internal splits and US pressure, and a military coup ended the MNR's rule in 1964, but the changes in land and citizenship endured.¹²