Constructing Roads, Washing Feet, and Cutting Cane for the Patria: Building Bolivia with Military Labor, 1900–1975

Elizabeth Shesko

International Labor and Working-Class History, 2011, vol. 80, issue 1, 6-28

Abstract: This article reveals the range of tasks performed by military laborers in twentieth-century Bolivia, distinguishing between martial and nonmartial labor to understand how productive tasks became central to the military's mission. The detailed exploration of soldiers' laboring lives shows that their work as strikebreakers, builders, agriculturalists, and domestic servants reinforced social hierarchies and supported private capital. Despite hopes that military service would unify a diverse populace, soldiers on the indigenous end of the spectrum disproportionally performed the more abject labors. The first section charts the development of nonmartial labor and shows how some soldiers objected to working conditions by invoking the dissonance between martial discourse and nonmartial experiences. The article then turns to the increasing legibility of nonmartial labor in the aftermath of the Chaco War (1932–1935). The final section details the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement's efforts to fold the army into the 1952 Revolution by emphasizing soldiers' productive labor.

Date: 2011
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