Evo Morales rode to power on a wave of popular mobilizations against the neoliberal policies enforced by his predecessors. Yet many of his economic policies bare striking resemblance to the status quo he was meant to displace. Based in part on dozens of interviews with leading Bolivian activists, Jeff Webber examines the contradictions of Morales' first term in office.

"A study of United States-Bolivian in the post-World War II era. Explores attempts by Bolivian revolutionary leaders to both secure United States assistance and to obtain time and space to develop their policies and plans"--Provided by publisher.

After centuries of colonial domination and a twentieth century riddled with dictatorships, indigenous peoples in Bolivia embarked upon a social and political struggle that would change the country forever. As part of that project activists took control of their own history, starting in the 1960s by reaching back to oral traditions and then forward to new forms of print and broadcast media. This book tells the fascinating story of how indigenous Bolivians recovered and popularized histories of past rebellions, political models, and leaders, using them to build movements for rights, land, autonomy, and political power. Drawing from rich archival sources and the author’s lively interviews with indigenous leaders and activist-historians, The Five Hundred Year Rebellion describes how movements tapped into centuries-old veins of oral history and memory to produce manifestos, booklets, and radio programs on histories of resistance, wielding them as tools to expand their struggles and radically transform society.

Bolivia witnessed a left-indigenous insurrectionary cycle between 2000 and 2005 that overthrew two neoliberal presidents and laid the foundation for Evo Morales’ successful bid to become the country’s first indigenous head of state in 2006. Building on the theoretical traditions of revolutionary Marxism and indigenous liberation, this book provides an analytical framework for understanding the fine-grained sociological and political nuances of twenty-first century Bolivian class-struggle, state-repression, and indigenous resistance, as well the deeply historical roots of today’s oppositional traditions. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, including more than 80 in-depth interviews with social-movement and trade-union activists, Red October is a ground-breaking intervention in the study of contemporary Bolivia and the wider Latin American turn to the left over the last decade.

In an age of military neoliberalism, social movements and center-Left coalition governments have advanced across South America, sparking hope for radical change in a period otherwise characterized by regressive imperial and anti-imperial politics. Nowhere do the limits and possibilities of popular advance stand out as they do in Bolivia, the most heavily indigenous country in the Americas. Revolutionary Horizons traces the rise to power of Evo Morales's new administration, whose announced goals are to end imperial domination and internal colonialism through nationalization of the country's oil and gas reserves, and to forge a new system of political representation. In doing so, Hylton and Thomson provide an excavation of Andean revolution, whose successive layers of historical sedimentation comprise the subsoil, loam, landscape, and vistas for current political struggles in Bolivia. Revolutionary Horizons offers a unique and timely window onto the challenges faced by Morales's government and by the South American continent alike.

An accessible account of Evo Morales's first six years in office, offering analysis of major issues as well as interviews with a wide variety of people, resulting in a valuable primer on Bolivia and Morales's "process of change".

A Revolution for Our Rights is a critical reassessment of the causes and significance of the Bolivian Revolution of 1952. Historians have tended to view the revolution as the result of class-based movements that accompanied the rise of peasant leagues, mineworker unions, and reformist political projects in the 1930s. Laura Gotkowitz argues that the revolution had deeper roots in the indigenous struggles for land and justice that swept through Bolivia during the first half of the twentieth century. Challenging conventional wisdom, she demonstrates that rural indigenous activists fundamentally reshaped the military populist projects of the 1930s and 1940s. In so doing, she chronicles a hidden rural revolution—before the revolution of 1952—that fused appeals for equality with demands for a radical reconfiguration of political power, landholding, and rights. Gotkowitz combines an emphasis on national political debates and congresses with a sharply focused analysis of Indian communities and large estates in the department of Cochabamba. The fragmented nature of Cochabamba’s Indian communities and the pioneering significance of its peasant unions make it a propitious vantage point for exploring contests over competing visions of the nation, justice, and rights. Scrutinizing state authorities’ efforts to impose the law in what was considered a lawless countryside, Gotkowitz shows how, time and again, indigenous activists shrewdly exploited the ambiguous status of the state’s pro-Indian laws to press their demands for land and justice. Bolivian indigenous and social movements have captured worldwide attention during the past several years. By describing indigenous mobilization in the decades preceding the revolution of 1952, A Revolution for Our Rights illuminates a crucial chapter in the long history behind present-day struggles in Bolivia and contributes to an understanding of indigenous politics in modern Latin America more broadly.

Throughout the 2000s Latin America transformed itself into the leading edge of anti-neoliberal resistance in the world. What is left of the Pink Tide today? What is their relationship to the explosive social movements that propelled them to power? As China's demand slackens for Latin American commodities, will governments continue to rely on natural resource extraction? In an accessible and penetrating volume, Jeffery Webber examines the most important questions facing the Latin American left today.

“An excellent account and analysis of the Mexican Revolution, its background, its course, and its legacy . . . an important contribution [and] a must read!” (Samuel Farber, author of Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959). The most significant event in modern Mexican history, the Mexican Revolution of 1910-20 remains a subject of debate and controversy. Why did it happen? What makes it distinctive? Was it even a revolution at all? In The Mexican Revolution, Stuart Easterling offers a concise chronicle of events from the fall of the longstanding Díaz regime to Gen. Obregón’s ascent to the presidency. In a comprehensible style, aimed at students and general readers, Easterling sorts through the revolution’s many internal conflicts, and asks whether or not its leaders achieved their goals.

An accessible, yet insightful, look into the promise, potential, and political contradictions of Evo Morales' first term.