Download La utopía social conservadora en Bolivia El gobierno de Manuel

Hispanic American Historical Review August 2008 88(3): 536-537; doi:10.1215/00182168-2008-357
Book Review - La utopía social conservadora en Bolivia: El gobierno de Manuel
Isidoro Belzu, 1848 – 1855
by Carlos Pérez, California State University, Fresno
La utopía social conservadora en Bolivia: El gobierno de Manuel Isidoro Belzu, 1848 – 1855. By andrey
schelchkov. Moscow: Academia de Ciencias de Rusia / Instituto de Historia Universal, Centro de Estudios
Latinoamericanos, 2007. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. 255 pp. Paper.
This study of the enigmatic figure of caudillo Manuel Isidoro Belzu explores his role in nineteenthcentury 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 our under- standing not only of the caudillo but also of early
republican nation-state formation. Perhaps the most eloquent exponent of this anti-Belzu bias was that
of the noted Bolivian historian Alcides Arguedas, who published a multivolume work on nineteenthcentury Bolivia, Historia de Bolivia (1922 –). His critique is best summarized by the title of the volume
dedicated to Belzu, La plebe en acción. After the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution there was a
reappraisal of Belzu’s role in the nation’s history, best exemplified by Fausto Reinaga’s Belzu: Precursor
de la revolución nacional (1953). In the United States,
E. Bradford Burns’s historical revisionist essay The Poverty of Progress (1980) examined Belzu,
characterizing him as a folk caudillo. Although Schelchkov’s analysis of Belzu and belcismo is reminiscent
of Burns’s interpretation, he grounds his study on secondary works as well as primary documentation
from the Bolivian national archives and the national archives of Argentina and Peru. He also utilizes
contemporaneous gazettes and the period’s pamphlet literature.
Lately doctoral students and other scholars have also utilized Bolivia’s national archives to study Belzu
and nineteenth-century Bolivian history. Schelchkov incorporates this recent scholarship to arrive at a
comprehensive investigation of this pivotal period in Bolivian history. After examining early nineteenthcentury Bolivia’s politics, society, and economy, along with a brief biographical sketch, Schelchkov
focuses on the political crisis that emerged during the presidential administration of General José Ballivián, a member of the aristocratic elite supported by the southern mining oligarchy and the northern
commercial interests of the large landowners. Belzu’s revolt against Ballivián galvanized those social
sectors disenchanted with the direction of the nation and its economic stagnation. It also introduced a
new element into the political process that had been ignored up to that time: the popular classes,
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Hispanic American Historical Review August 2008 88(3): 536-537; doi:10.1215/00182168-2008-357
especially the cinchona bark gatherers and merchants, artisans, public employees, the military, and the
cholos (partially Hispanicized Indians).
Once having seized power in 1848, Belzu sought reconciliation with his former enemies but, as
Schelchkov demonstrates, this was greeted with a general anti-Belzu rebellion in March 1849, directed
by the ballivianistas. The level of popular support for Belzu in the principal cities is documented by the
author as the masses took up arms to crush the aristocratic rebellion in defense of Belzu. The rebellion
contributed to the complete rupture of any accommodation with the former political and economic
elite. It firmly established that Belzu’s political power lay not with the nation’s traditional elite but
instead with the popular classes and the military. Responding to popular demands, Belzu instituted
administrative policies to consolidate and modernize the state apparatus, basing these policies on liberal
political principles, on the one hand, and conservative ideas regarding religion and social control, on the
other. With some stability, Belzu introduced economic policies beneficial to those social groups that had
supported him. The state played a predominant role in trying to revitalize the stagnant economy by concentrating on the principal exports of silver, copper, cinchona bark, and guano. In commerce, Belzu
supported a liberalization of the national economy by abolishing monopolies and lowering customs
duties, but a distrust of foreign merchants resulting from their active support of his political enemies
and the financing of the rebellions against his regime contributed to an inconsistent form of
protectionism. This protectionism also sought to revive artisan production, which continued to decline
throughout the nineteenth century. The author has characterized Belzu’s economic policies as a
combination of mercantilism and economic liberalism in favor of the popular classes.
Schelchkov does an excellent job in analyzing the ideological bases of belcismo and its delicate balancing
act between traditional ideas inherited from the colonial past and the modern ideas that penetrated
Bolivia during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This well-researched and extremely
readable study lays the foundation for future investigations into Bolivia’s nineteenth-century caudillo
politics, which shaped the formation of the nation-state and still echo in the twenty-first century, as
evidenced by the rise of Evo Morales, the first indigenous Bolivian president enacting populist and
nationalist policies in favor of the popular classes.
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