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Proclaiming Revolution

Proclaiming Revolution

Bolivia in Comparative Perspective

Edited by Merilee Grindle and Pilar Domingo

ISBN 9780674011410

Publication date: 10/15/2003

In 1952 Bolivia was transformed by revolution. With the army destroyed from only a few days of fighting, workers and peasants took up arms to claim the country as their own. Overnight, the electorate expanded five-fold. Industries were turned over to worker organizations to manage, and land was distributed to peasant communities. Education became universal and free for the first time in the country's history.

This volume, the result of a conference organized by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies of Harvard University and the Institute for Latin American Studies at the University of London, presents new interpretations of the causes of the events of 1952 and compares them to the great social transformations that occurred in France, Mexico, Russia, China, and Cuba. It also considers the consequences of the revolution by examining the political, social, and economic development of the country, as well as adding important insights to the analysis of revolution and the understanding of this fascinating Andean country.

Praise

  • Proclaiming Revolution is an important contribution--the first book of its kind to approach the implications and consequences of the 1952 revolution in comparison with other Latin American revolutions of similar magnitude...[It] permits us to see the possibility of creating a society that is more humane, reconstructing diverse sociocultural identities in order to reinvent the Bolivian nation "sin mayziscúlas"--the plurimulti "nation" and not "Nation."

    —Franco Gamboa Rocabado, Hispanic American Historical Review

Authors

  • Merilee Grindle is the Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development, Emerita, at Harvard University and the former director of its David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. She served as president of the Latin American Studies Association and has written or contributed to over a dozen scholarly books.
  • Pilar Domingo is Lecturer in Politics, Queen Mary College, University of London.

Book Details

  • 448 pages
  • 6 x 9 inches
  • David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies

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