The original two volumes of this biography of the Bolivian President Daniel Salamanca established David Alvéstegui as one of Bolivi’s foremost historians. While lacking the paraphernalia of scholarship, his earlier volumes were based on a wealth of research and gave a balanced and intimate study of one of the most complex men ever to come out of Bolivian politics. Using Salamanca’s previously unresearched private papers, he carried though an impartial analysis of the emotional, intellectual, and political development of Salamanca to the eve of his presidency in 1930.
Because of the excellence of these two volumes it is all the more disappointing to find that this third volume falls far short of previous standards. Dropping his impartiality, Alvéstegui makes this book into a blind defense of Salamanca’s position on the Chaco War and his presidential term in general. Thus he takes up over half this volume with a hackneyed and terribly one-sided history of Paraguayan-Bolivian relations over the Chaco. When he finally does get to the first years of Salamanca’s presidency, in which he himself played an important part, his review of the crucial pre-war years of 1931 and 1932 is rapid and superficial. Considering the vital importance these months had on the coming of the war and the vast amount of private presidential papers which the author has seen and admits exist for this period, his superficiality and partiality is even more inexcusable. The economic and social milieu of depression-ridden Bolivia is completely ignored, controversial acts such as Salamanca’s proposition of a repressive security law are glossed over, and finally, the increasingly emotional responses of Salamanca to the growing opposition to his ineffectual regime are never discussed.
Given the author’s bias, the question of the responsibility of Salamanca in causing the Chaco War is a foregone conclusion. First of all the Paraguayans made war inevitable by their unceasing territorial aggression; next all the people who supported Salamanca’s unique unopposed presidential election in 1931 must share his responsibility, since they knew of Salamanca’s strong “patriotic” irredentist position on the Chaco; and finally to be blamed are the Army officers who lied the president into war. Unfortunately this volume stops just before Salamanca’s crucial decision to carry a border incident into a full scale reprisal: the one decision which Salamanca made despite Army opposition, and the decision which undisputedly unleashed all-out war.
For those who prefer a more balanced and complete analysis of these same developments, the recent and excellent studies of David H. Zook and Porfirio Díaz Machicao are to be recommended. It can only be hoped that in his fourth and concluding volume, Señor Alvéstegui will return to the original standards which have made his previous volumes such an important contribution to Bolivian scholarship.
