CHAPTER 10 Social Change in Bolivia since 1952 Herbert S. Klein T he aim of this chapter will be to define the major social changes that have occurred in Bolivia since 1952 and to compare them with the same changes that have occurred within the other countries of Latin America. By doing this I hope to delineate what was unique to the Bolivian experience and what was common to all such states. There is lit- tle question that the changes in Bolivia in the last 50 years have been pro- found, but it is difficult to determine which changes were due to conti- nental-wide developments and which were due to the political and eco- nomic factors unleashed by the National Revolution of 1952. Bolivia in 1952 was still a predominantly rural society, the majority of whose population was only marginally integrated into the national economy. Of all economically active persons listed in the census of 1950, fully 72 per cent were engaged in agriculture and allied industries. 1 Yet this workforce only produced some 33 per cent of the gross national product, a discrepan- cy that clearly indicates the serious economic retardation of this sector. 2 Although Bolivia had a modern, if aging, mining sector, it otherwise con- tained few national industries. Only a minority of workers participated in the modern wage sector. Most workers were agriculturalists producing tradi- tional Andean highland crops. Largely rural and agricultural, Bolivia could not even feed its national population by the middle of the twentieth centu- ry. Through the constant expansion of the hacienda system, land distribu- tion had become one of the most unjust in Latin America. The six per cent of the landowners who owned 1,000 hectares or more of land controlled fully 92 per cent of all cultivated land in the republic. Moreover, these large estates themselves were underutilized, with just 1.5 per cent of the lands on the 1,000-hectare estates under cultivation. At the opposite extreme were the 60 per cent of the landowners who owned five hectares or less, true mini- fundias, which accounted for just 0.2 per cent of all the land and were forced on average to put 54 per cent of their lands into cultivation (see Table 10.1). 3 The extreme inequality in the division of lands was essential in the control of rural labor. Owning the best lands in all the zones of the republic, the hacendados obtained their labor force by offering usufruct estate lands in exchange for labor. The Indians were required to supply seeds, tools and in some cases even animals for this work, which left the owner with few capi- tal inputs to supply. The Indians were even required to transport the final in Pilar Domingo & Merille Grindle, eds., Proclaiming Revolution: Bolivia in Comparative Perspective (Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University & University of London Latin American Institute; Boston: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 232-258.