Blood of the Earth

Kevin A. Young is an assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

• AcknowledgmentsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Natural Resources, Economic Visions, and US Intervention in Twentieth-Century Bolivia1. The Road to Resource Nationalism: Economic Ideas and Popular Coalitions in La Paz, 1927–19522. A New Type of Bolivian Economy: Competing Visions, 1952–19563. The Political Economy of Containment: Privatization, Austerity, and the MNR’s Shift to the Right, 1955–19644. The Battle for Men’s Minds: Economic Paradigms, Propaganda, and the Iconography of Revolution5. The Limits of Containment: Anti-Austerity and Resource Nationalism in La Paz Factories6. Oil and Nation: The Crusade to Save Bolivia’s HydrocarbonsEpilogue: Resource Nationalism and Popular Struggle in the Twenty-First CenturyAppendix: Professional Backgrounds of Key Middle-Class Participants in Economic Debates, 1940s–1960sNotesBibliographyIndex

The importance of this book to contemporary conversations about extractivism in Bolivia cannot be overstated. (Latin American Perspectives) [Young] draws a complex and fascinating picture of the struggles over mining and oil from the Chaco War in the 1930s through the 1952 Revolution and the unraveling of the revolutionary state in the 1960s. (Against the Current) Young is to be congratulated on creating a comprehensive history of recent Bolivian history that also offers a new lens for interpreting Latin American populism. It is one of the finest examples of the recent, and very welcome, production of works on Latin American economic history. (The Americas) Young expertly contextualizes his discussion of resource nationalism with previous attempts to bring natural resources under governmental control...[A] compelling and wonderful book. (American Historical Review) Blood of the Earth makes a significant contribution to the historiography of the Bolivian revolution and provides new analytical insights into U.S. Cold War objectives in Latin America. (Diplomatic History) Blood of the Earth provides a compelling retelling of a Cold War story against the grain, in which the United States funded and tamed a revolution instead of intervening with force. (Hispanic American Historical Review) [Young's] detailed description of [the US government's public relations campaign aimed at taming resource nationalism in Bolivia] is certainly enlightening as it brings a hitherto unknown side of US interventions in Latin America to our attention. (Latin American Research Review) Young's concept of 'resource nationalism' casts a new interpretive light on the Bolivian political scene of the 1950s and 1960s. It also provides continuity between the political ferment that followed the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 and the popular mobilization that led to the election of Evo Morales in December 2005. (Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies) Blood of the Earth is an intelligent and informative book that will be of interest to students of Bolivian history and present times, and to those who wish to explore resource nationalism in the Bolivian context...the material makes an important contribution to the field of Bolivian studies and the writing style contributes to a pleasant reading. (Bulletin of Latin American Research)