Bringing the Revolution to the Countryside: Rural Health Programmes as State‐Building in Post‐1952 Bolivia

Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, MNR) took power in April 1952 via a popular social revolution. After 1952, the party implemented state‐sponsored modernisation projects, including extending rural public health programmes. The MNR used health programmes to change rural practices, cultivate political loyalty, and expand the state's political power. Yet rural indigenous communities were hardly passive recipients of these programmes. These communities often requested government services, and they borrowed the MNR's own political rhetoric to position themselves as worthy of state attention. Public health programmes increased access to rural health care, but they also allowed state officials and rural communities to negotiate the MNR's authority.     

Indigenous Peasant ‘Otherness’: Rural Identities and Political Processes in Bolivia

Since Morales's election, rural movements have become the new protagonists of Bolivian politics. Previous analyses have emphasised their active role in shaping national politics, often focusing on those organisations as a compact block. However, their relationship is marked by both cooperation and fragmentation. This article provides a narrative of Bolivian socio‐political history over the last 60 years, establishing four main phases of identitarian articulations/disarticulations. It demonstrates the high degree of interdependence and fluidity of ethnic and class identities, as well as their interconnections with the broader socio‐political context and the national legal and institutional changes.     

Defining Rights in Democratization: The Argentine Government and Human Rights Organizations, 1983–2003

Defining the rights that must be protected in a democracy is an integral component of the process of democratization. In the case of Argentina, the definition of these rights results partly from important debates between human rights organizations (HROs) and the state. Argentine HROs have framed their demands for state protection of human rights in terms of the need to protect the family. Yet HROs' successes in using international courts as arbiters may be reducing their need to present their demands in this framework.     

Indigenous Peoples in Commonwealth Countries: The Legacy of the Past and Present-day Struggles for Self-determination

Abstract

Although the UK has no indigenous peoples as understood by the UN, its earlier colonial policies in Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Caribbean have had consequences for today’s first peoples Colonial policies that deprived the native populations of their lands, resources and self-determination were generally pursued by the independent states that came in their wake. Today the world’s indigenous peoples are looking to bring to an end their colonial-type situations and re-establish control over their lands and futures. After more than 20 years, the United Nations adopted a Declaration setting out the rights of indigenous peoples, but several Commonwealth countries were unrelenting opponents. This article looks at the colonial heritage as it affects indigenous peoples in the Commonwealth countries, some of the contemporary struggles and situations that have marked the last years, and tries to understand why countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand were the last to accept that indigenous peoples had a right to self-determination.     

The Mining Industry and the State: The Politics of Tin Restriction in Bolivia, 1936–1939

In the aftermath of the Chaco War (1932–1935) a strong left nationalist political current emerged in Bolivia which defined the three large mining companies of Patiño, Hochschild and Aramayo as a superstate, controlling both the economy and the politics of the nation to their own advantage. This article challenges that characterisation by examining the way in which the state exercised control over the two largest producers. Unfortunately, the state lacked the technical capacity to use its powers responsibly, preventing the development of a coherent mining policy.