| |
|
|
| |
Home
>
World
> South America
> Bolivia
|
History and Government
History: Bolivia was inhabited by the ancient Aymará civilisation, who lived on Lake Titicaca. Later, this civilisation was conquered by the Incas, who were themselves conquered by the Spanish in 1538. Throughout the country’s colonial history it was known as Upper Peru. In 1825 Simon Bolivar led the country to independence. In its early years, independent Bolivia was ruled by a succession of caudillos (military dictators) who tried with mixed success to integrate the country’s three disparate regions – the central region, the eastern Andes and the Altiplano – into a national entity.
Wars with three neighbouring countries followed, namely the 1879-83 War of the Pacific, against Peru (with whom Bolivia had been briefly confederated in the 1830s) and Chile, and later the 1928 Chaco Wars against Paraguay, as a result of which Bolivia lost the Atacama coastal strip and became landlocked. The one positive effect of the wars was that the rule of the caudillos was challenged by a rising mercantile class, whose prosperity was rooted in the mining industries then under steady development. In 1953, Chile declared the port of Arica ‘free’ and has allowed Bolivia certain privileges in its use. The issue was never fully settled – until 1992, when Peru agreed to allow Bolivia free use of the port of Ilo for 100 years. (The facility is subject to conditions about which the Bolivians are not entirely happy).
Domestically, Bolivia has entered an unprecedented era of political stability, ending a record of military coups and recurrent internal strife that was little short of ludicrous: there were 192 coups in the 156 years from independence to 1981, an average of one every ten months. Much of the credit is due to President Victor Paz Estenssoro – the grand old man of Bolivian politics who had held the presidency between 1952-56 and 1960-64 and who was elected in August 1985 at the head of a loose coalition of both left- and right-wing parties. By the time Paz Estenssoro ceded office in August 1989 to Jaime Paz Zamora, rampant hyper-inflation (an estimated 14,000 per cent in 1985) had been dramatically cut after initial unrest over the Government’s strict austerity programme. Paz Estenssoro had been the candidate of one of Bolivia’s five main political parties, the Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR). The other four are the right-wing Acción Democrática Nacionalista (ADN), the Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), the Unión Cívica Solidaridad (UCS) and Conciencia de Patria (CONDEPA).
The most recent presidential election in June 1997 returned the ADN candidate Hugo Banzer Suarez, a former general with a long history of political activity, as President. Ill health forced Banzer to stand down in 2001 (he died in May 2002). Vice-President Jorge Quiroga Ramirez took over, pending the next set of elections, which are due in June 2002.
The most important domestic issue for the Government continues to be the US-sponsored ‘war on drugs’ – coca and its products in the case of Bolivia – which is widely unpopular in a country where coca is considered to be both a traditional product and a valuable cash crop. The government has announced that all coca plantations will be eradicated by the end of 2002: although the campaign has undoubtedly made some headway, this is highly unlikely given the increasingly fierce resistance from the coca farmers. The major foreign policy issues are the development of regional cooperation, principally concerned with trade and economic harmonisation and – on a bilateral level – Bolivia’s persistently problematic relations with Chile.
Government: The bicameral congress is the legislature, and is made up of the 27-member Senate and 130-member Chamber of Deputies. Both the Congress and the President, who is head of state and wields executive power with a Cabinet of Ministers, are directly elected for terms of four years.
Copyright © 2003 Columbus Publishing Ltd.
Terms and Conditions apply.
|
|
|
|
|
