Other than the era of the 1952 revolution, no period is more significant in defining the character of twentieth-century Bolivia than that of the self-styled “military socialist governments of David Toro and German Busch. Although it lasted only three years (1936-1939), the “military socialism” introduced by these two prominent veterans of the Chaco War ended the traditionalist politics of limited participation that had characterized Bolivian national affairs since 1880. The post-Chaco War generation, encouraged by the rhetoric and bold actions of Toro and Busch, soon turned to a class-based politics that assured the mobilization necessary for social revolution little more than a decade later.
Professor Ferran Gallego, of the Department of Modem and Contemporary History at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, has written a detailed study of the Toro and Busch regimes that specialists will find useful for its thorough discussion of the diverse political issues of this dynamic period in Bolivian history. Nevertheless, these two volumes offer few fresh interpretive insights. Nor, despite their titles, do they sufficiently analyze the troubled internal institutional affairs of the Bolivian army in the aftermath of its humiliating defeat by Paraguay in the Chaco War.
Gallego recognizes, as Porfirio Díaz Machicado and Herbert S. Klein have in previous studies, the critical role of the Chaco War veterans’ groups, such as the Legión de Excombatientes and particularly the Asociación Nacional de Excombatientes Socialistas, in shaping the policies of the Toro and Busch regimes. But the internal dynamics of these two vitally important military interest groups could have been explored in greater depth. Also needed is a comprehensive review of the prevailing attitudes of the army officer corps and enlisted ranks. For example, Toro’s decision to expropriate Standard Oil of New Jersey’s Bolivian properties in 1937 was certainly linked to the colonel’s rapidly falling political stock within the armed forces and his resulting effort to broaden his popular base. But although Gallego relies on British Foreign Office records to gain insight into the military decision-making process throughout the Toro regime, it is never fully clear how the veterans or the senior army officers worked with the colonel or his more popular successor, Busch. Had Gallego discussed the oral histories of Chaco War veterans found in René Danilo Arze Aguirre’s Guerra y conflicto sociales. El caso rural Boliviano durante la campaña del Chaco (1987), his analysis would have been enhanced.
These significant problems notwithstanding, this work should be read by specialists interested in modern Bolivia and in Latin American populism. Gallego’s more narrowly focused study augments Klein’s Parties and Political Change in Bolivia, 1880-1952 (1969) and contains valuable discussions of key economic issues during the era of “military socialism.” If he intends to continue in the same research direction, however, Professor Gallego should consider consulting Bolivian army journal literature and the records of the Modern Military Division of the U.S. National Archives.
