government to build up the small Bolivian military. MNR moderates, realizing that the stabilization/austerity plan could cause tremendous political and social instability in Bolivia, threatening MNR rule, quietly asked the U.S. As such, from the perspective of internal Bolivian politics, the moderates saw the stabilization/austerity plan as very useful while the left saw it (correctly) as a way of minimizing their power. That is, MNR centrists realized that the costs of the stabilization/austerity plan would fall most heavily on the left-thus buttressing the control of the moderates. diplomats to denude the left-wing of the MNR of its power. As other authors have pointed out, the moderate wing of the MNR, headed up by President Paz Estenssoro and HernГЎn Siles Zuazo, used their relationship with U.S. Possibly because YoungвЂ™s use of Bolivian sources is minimal, the Bolivian вЂvoiceвЂ™ is muted in his article. economic aid program to Bolivia was unprecedented for a Third World Nation.ДЄ second criticism of the article concerns the issue of the agency of the non-United States вЂactorвЂ™ or вЂplayerвЂ™ in international relations. Other scholars in the field have addressed this issue-not surprisingly, since the U.S. policymakers applied the вЂlessonsвЂ™ of the US aid program to Bolivia more broadly. aid program towards Latin America, and the вЂhigh tideвЂ™ of the application of modernization theory to the Third World- he does not specifically address the question of whether U.S. Bolivian aid program foreshadowed the Alliance for Progress (1961-1969)-a very generous U.S. policymakers consciously thought that Bolivia was a вЂtest caseвЂ™-that is, could the Bolivian experience be applied other places? Although Young does discuss how the 1950s U.S. Young might have focused more attention on the issue of how much U.S. As the MNR dissolved, it became increasingly difficult to forge a revolutionary consensus on policy, let alone a national vision for Bolivia. assistance was, in general, вЂtied aidвЂ™) Moreover, the Plan represented a turning point in recent Bolivian history- the beginning of the end of the tenuous unity of the leftist and moderate factions in the MNR.

(In the parlance of economic assistance, U.S. stipulations on Latin American economic behavior вЂ“ loosening/eliminating restrictions on the flow of trade and capital in particular. economic assistance to Latin American from the 1960s to the present-generous assistance for some countries, coupled with U.S. Such plans would become de rigueur by the 1980s, and very much affected the trajectory of Third-World history in the late twentieth century. (Young uses the term вЂњstabilizationвЂќ in the title of his article, but I think the term вЂњstability/ austerity planвЂќ is more accurate.) Briefly, the stabilization/austerity plan (or, more simply, Plan) required Bolivia to terminate social reforms, curtail government intervention in the economy, and vastly reduce the money supply, in exchange for significant U.S. The stabilization/austerity plan was the first time that an economic stability/austerity plan was implemented (imposed?) on a Third-World nation.

YoungвЂ™s article is particularly important on many levels. policy significantly changed the course of the Bolivian Revolution, and that the most vulnerable members of Bolivian society (the working class and poor) paid the greatest portion of the costs of this changed Revolution.

leaders wanted to promote a labor system in which labor was more malleable and quiescent as compared to the powerfully assertive labor movement of the recently-triumphant Central Obrero Boliviano (COB), or National WorkersвЂ™ Movement, which (at least in the 1950s) was fostered by, and worked closely with, the ruling Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR), or the Nationalism Revolutionary Movement, which governed Bolivia from 1952-1964. вЂњFree-marketвЂќ meant that the (Bolivian) state would have minimal impact on economic activity-and any impact was to facilitate private-sector investment. That mission was to foster an open free-market capitalist system-open to outside, especially United States, trade, investment, and, more broadly, influence. policymakers in Bolivia in the mid-to-late-1950s. Kevin YoungвЂ™s article, вЂњPurging the Forces of DarknessвЂ¦вЂќ does a very good job of discussing the core mission of U.S. вЂњPurging the Forces of Darkness: The United States, Monetary Stabilization, and the Containment of the Bolivian RevolutionвЂќ. Article Review Editors: Thomas Maddux and Diane LabrosseД¬ommissioned for H-Diplo by Thomas Maddux

The forces of darkness