BOLIVIA

7.9m inhabitants; 70% Indian; 30% of population speak Quechua, 25% speak Aymara, also Guarani
1.1m square miles (the size of Texas and California combined)
La Paz is world's highest capital city (12,000')

mining: silver, then tin . . . now coca
tin boom in early 20th Century--the tin barons

War of the Pacific of 1879-83: lost coastline to Chile -- still contested

1952-1964: Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR) progressive experiment
       
Victor Paz Estenssoro (1908-2001)

Estenssoro president from 1952-1956, 1960-1964  (Hernan Siles Zuazo president 1956-60)
massive land reform (esp. to Indians), universal suffrage, nationalized mines

1964-1982: military rule
continued many MNR programs, but with a heavier hand
1980s narcotics link to military

1982: Hernan Siles Zuazo reelected, but forced to call early elections
1985: Estenssoro reelected president
national debt = $3.2 billion, the size of GNP
24,000% inflation
tin prices crash
institutes neoliberal reforms; lays off 20,000 of 30,000 mine workers
economy stabilizes

1989 Jaime Paz Zamora
1993 Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada (MNR)
1997 Gen. Hugo Banzer (former dictator, 1971-1974)
2001 Banzer has cancer, Jorge Quiroga takes over

elections in June 2002: no clear winner, Congress chooses Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (a free-market conservative)

October 2003, in protest of coca eradication measures and neoliberal reforms, riots and strikes forced Sánchez from office; he flees to Miami and Carlos Mesa (his vice-president) sworn in

El Tío and the Tin Mines

PERU

23 million inhabitants, about 35% Indians (Quechua and Aymara speakers)
regions: coast, Andes, Amazonia

Guano boom: 1841 - 1890 (virtually all sold to England for fertilizer)
        -1860: 80% of government revenues from guano
        - built up huge debt to England
        -1890: guano reserves exhausted
exports: gold, fishmeal, copper, and coca

1968-1980: military rule, but progressive (a system "neither communist nor capitalist")
agrarian reform, nationalized industries
SINAMOS programs (Sistema Nacional de Apoyo de Mobilizacion Social)
a stakeholding model

Sendero Luminoso - Shining Path
*roots in the 1960s, radical Marxist university-types in Ayacucho
*Marxist-Leninist-Maoist philosophy (Partido Comunista de Peru, PCP)
*Chairman Mao concluded that the superstructure (consciousness) can transform the base and with political power develop the productive forces weight to agriculturists as well as workers; proletariat-peasant alliance
 

Carols Abimael Guzman (AKA President Gonzalo)
Gonzalo Thought
see PCP web pages at http://www.solrojo.org/   [Spanish]  and  http://www.redsun.org/   [English]
also Songs of the Shining Trenches of Combat: http://www.redsun.org/mpp_doc/mpp_cd.htm
all out war after 1980
1990: as many as 10,000 troops, controlled the Huallaga Valley (home to coca production)
terrorism in the countryside and the cities
government institutes secret courts, with hooded judges


Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA)
1996 takes over Japanese embassy

1990 Alberto Fujimori (El Chinito) elected president

    inflation at 20,000%
            enacts neo-liberal reforms know as el paquetazo
    Hernando de Soto one of his advisors
    real income drops by 30%
1992 Fujimori's auto-coup
1993 new constitution
1995 Fujimori re-elected
2000 flees country in wake of Montesinos scandal; in Japan
    Vladimir Montesinos, head of internal security forces, implicated in massive bribery scheme
                captured in 2001 in Venezuela
            VladiVideos: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/mmedia/world/030701-20v.htm

2001 Alejandro Toledo elected president
                praying to Pachamama and the Apukuna

2003 Peru joins MERCOSUR