The intellectual origins of the modern Bolivian political system, 1918--1943

This dissertation tells the story of the birth of modern politics in Bolivia. It argues that the modern Bolivian political system was founded during the 1920s and 1930s by a small group of Creole intellectuals from Cochabamba. By examining the lives, family backgrounds, and social networks of prominent writers and educators, this dissertation shows how a cadre of thinkers, motivated by personal and professional desires, invented modern Bolivian politics.;The intellectuals discussed in this study, including Jose Antonio Arze, Augusto Cespedes, Jose Aguirre Gainsbourg, and Carlos Montenegro, were inspired by their personal ambitions and experiences to transform Bolivian politics. They developed alliances with important social groups, particularly the labor movement and the professionalized military, during the 1920s and 1930s. These networks created a new political consciousness in Bolivia. Using a sociological approach to the history of the intelligentsia, the project argues that the disparate, often antagonistic ideologies of Bolivian modernity originated in the experiences of the nation's leading political thinkers and their relationships with key social groups. The struggles of daily life, it demonstrates, build political consciousness; the networks assembled by collective experience create politics.;After the disastrous Chaco War with Paraguay and the military socialist regimes of David Toro and German Busch, these intellectuals embodied their modern ideological positions in a variety of new parties and organizations. These included the nationalist Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), the Marxian Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (PIR), and the Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR). This dissertation traces the origins of these parties by examining the experiences of the political intellectuals who organized them.;The ideologies and policies associated with modernity in Bolivia---particularly nationalism and socialism---still have currency today. The failure of "revolutionary," "reformist," and "populist" governments from the 1930s until the 2000s to fulfill the promises made by modern political institutions is a key reason for the success of Evo Morales' indigenista populism. Understanding the origins of the political, social, and cultural ideologies of the modern political system is thus crucial to comprehending Bolivia in the twenty-first century.