From Development to Dictatorship : : Bolivia and the Alliance for Progress in the Kennedy Era / / Thomas C. Field.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Field, Thomas C.,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2014]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Series: The United States in the World
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (296 p.) :; 6 halftones, 2 line figures

During the most idealistic years of John F. Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress development program, Bolivia was the highest per capita recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America. Nonetheless, Washington’s modernization programs in early 1960s Bolivia ended up on a collision course with important sectors of the country’s civil society, including radical workers, rebellious students, and a plethora of rightwing and leftwing political parties. In From Development to Dictatorship, Thomas C. Field Jr. reconstructs the untold story of USAID’s first years in Bolivia, including the country’s 1964 military coup d’état. Field draws heavily on local sources to demonstrate that Bolivia’s turn toward anticommunist, development-oriented dictatorship was the logical and practical culmination of the military-led modernization paradigm that provided the liberal underpinnings of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. In the process, the book explores several underappreciated aspects of Cold War liberal internationalism: the tendency of "development" to encourage authoritarian solutions to political unrest, the connection between modernization theories and the rise of Third World armed forces, and the intimacy between USAID and CIA covert operations. At the same time, the book challenges the conventional dichotomy between ideology and strategy in international politics, and it engages with a growing literature on development as a key rubric for understanding the interconnected processes of decolonization and the Cold War.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- Map of South America, Early 1960s -- Map of Bolivia, Early 1960s -- Introduction: Ideology as Strategy -- 1. Modernization’s Heavy Hand: The Triangular Plan for Bolivia -- 2. Development as Anticommunism: The Targeting of Bolivian Labor -- 3. “Bitter Medicine”: Military Civic Action and the Battle of Irupata -- 4. Development’s Detractors: Miners, House wives, and the Hostage Crisis at Siglo XX -- 5. Seeds of Revolt: The Making of an Antiauthoritarian Front -- 6. Revolutionary Bolivia Puts On a Uniform: The 1964 Bolivian Coup d’État -- Conclusion: Development and Its Discontents -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index