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Bolivia tops the list of countries with turbulent histories. Poor indigenous people, wealthy immigrants, and foreign companies have been fighting over the country's rich mineral resources for centuries. A thriving coca crop further complicates the issue.
The US role has been to interfere in election campaigns, to train and support brutal military regimes, to bolster US companies trying to extract Bolivia's riches, to try to enslave Bolivia in the debt trap of the 1980s and 1990s, and paradoxically, to both support (under the CIA) and oppose (under the "War on Drugs") cocaine trafficking.
One wonders if Bolivia's history would be quite so turbulent if it weren't for the US.
In brief:
The Spanish conquered the area in the 1500s.
In the 1820s, Bolivia won its independence under Simon Bolivar (hence the name Bolivia).
Victor Paz Estenssoro was elected in 1951 and took power in 1952. He nationalized mines and gave rights to indigenous peoples. He was succeeded by his Vice President Hernan Siles Zuazo in 1956. Then he returned to power until a military coup in 1964.
Bolivia was ruled by a series of brutal military regimes from 1964 to 1982. The US supported these military regimes with money and by helping train them in repression, to suppress the people, who were constantly trying to rise up in protest.
In 1982 the military loosed its hold on the country. Hernan Siles Zuazo took power. (He had been elected in 1980, but unable to take power due to military coup.) He was succeeded by Victor Paz Estenssoro and others.
This time around, these leaders who had been somewhat radically left in the 1950s and 1960s succumbed to the trap of the day, and got Bolivia mired in "austerity measures" and the debt trap of the IMF of the 1980s and 1990s. Lots of Bolivia's industry was privatized and foreignized. For example, even much of Bolivia's water came under the control of US giant Bechtel.
In recent years, Bolivia seems once again headed to the left, having renationalized some industry and made some strides in land reform and indigenous people's rights. It seems to be one of a small but perhaps growing group of countries cautiously realigning towards Venezuela and away from Washington.
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