The Failure of Party Formation in Bolivia

This chapter explores the role of persistent traditional agrarian structures on party organization. Land privatization was considerably less extensive in Bolivia when compared to Mexico. Through agrarian census materials and archival evidence of attempted electoral mobilization and peasant union construction, the chapter show how the regions in the country with relatively higher levels of communal land tenure and strong traditional authority structures were places where it was essentially impossible for the MNR to establish sustainable links to a mass base. In regions with less communal property holding, the MNR developed close links to existing and emerging peasant unions. Ultimately, these regions were not large enough as in the Mexican case to sustain stable party formation.