This study of the enigmatic figure of caudillo Manuel Isidoro Belzu explores his role in nineteenth-century Bolivian nation-state development by presenting his policies as a reaction to capital penetration and the formation of a market economy. Andrey Schelchkov characterizes the ideology of belcismo as a conservative social utopia that sought to counteract the debilitating effects of dependent capitalist development, with its flooding of foreign merchandise into the national market, and the concomitant bankruptcy and decline of traditional economic activities based on artisan and petty production. This Bolivian variant of egalitarianism sought the survival of these traditional forms of economic production as a means to rescue the popular classes from the worst excesses of a market economy.
The figure of the caudillo has aroused partisan passions in Bolivian historiography since the eruption of Belzu’s brand of populism into the nation’s political life. The nineteenth-century aristocratic elite’s condemnation of Belzu has clouded...
