Oil and Nation

Hydrocarbons have been Bolivia's most important exports since the 1980s, yet there are few historical studies of the sector in English. Stephen Cote's Oil and Nation is thus most welcome. The overarching argument is that hydrocarbons have been central to both economic development and national consciousness, from the early nationalist debates of the 1910s and 1920s to the 2003 gas war and the quasi-nationalization of natural gas by the Evo Morales administration in 2006. Most of the book focuses on the first half of the twentieth century, and here Cote is strongest. Prior to the 1930s, the oil sector made very limited progress. Cote emphasizes the formidable obstacles in those early decades: the lack of investment capital, transport infrastructure, and state commitment, together with the remote location of oil reserves and the hostile natural environment of the Bolivian southeast. Nor did a major 1922 contract with the New Jersey–based Standard Oil Company lead to large-scale production, since Standard Oil was looking to monopolize reserves, not to produce.The most novel and provocative argument comes in chapter 3: that the devastating war between Bolivia and Paraguay (1932–1935), fought over the contested Chaco Boreal region in the southeast, was “one of the world's first oil wars” (p. 70). Though the disputed territory itself was not known to contain oil deposits, the Bolivian government was set on acquiring an oil export outlet via the Paraguay River. The rumor that the Chaco War was instigated by foreign companies Standard Oil and Royal Dutch Shell was long ago refuted by historians, but President Daniel Salamanca's own instigation of the war was indeed driven by oil considerations, says Cote. This argument rests on several pieces of evidence. A 1929 treaty between Peru and Chile had foreclosed the possibility of Bolivia regaining access to the Pacific, which it had lost to Chile in the 1880s. That same year, Argentina had denied Bolivia's request for a pipeline permit, closing off another export route. Perhaps the strongest evidence is a 1931 statement from Salamanca, part of which Cote quotes, saying that Bolivia's oil riches were being nullified since Argentina and Paraguay blocked the country's access to the Atlantic. “Bolivia could not resign itself to living miserably” in its landlocked condition, Salamanca proclaimed (p. 79). Meanwhile, Standard Oil was defying government demands for increased production at a time when domestic oil demand was increasing—partly due to military deployments in the southeast—and the state badly needed to increase its tax revenue.This evidence is strongly suggestive but not conclusive. While the government undoubtedly wanted port access, that desire predated the oil economy and seems to have been only one of several reasons for the war. As Herbert Klein, David Zook, and others have argued, Salamanca's decision also reflected domestic political concerns and a militaristic predisposition. The politically embattled Salamanca favored war at least in part as a way to divert popular anger in the midst of the Depression. War in the name of national honor offered a useful chauvinist distraction as well as a chance to repress leftists, who were conscripted and sent to the front lines. Thus, the book's claim for the paramount importance of oil may be overstated.Later chapters describe the growth of oil production and oil nationalist sentiment in the postwar era. Cote analyzes the creation of the state oil enterprise Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos (YPFB), the 1937 nationalization of Standard Oil, the sector's halting progress in the 1940s, and the major expansion of production by the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario government following the 1952 revolution. The book concludes with a helpful, if brief, summary of developments since the mid-1950s.There are several gaps in the story. Oil workers and their unions are mentioned only in passing, as are the reactions of communities near extraction sites and along pipeline routes. Though the book argues that oil helped galvanize regional identity in the eastern lowlands—which reached its most racist expression in opposition to Evo Morales's government—key organizational players like the Pro Santa Cruz Civic Committee are not examined. Part of the problem is source availability: the YPFB archive is all but closed to most researchers, and Cote was thus forced to rely heavily on official publications, newspaper reports, and secondary studies.Despite these omissions, Oil and Nation is an important contribution on an understudied topic. Moreover, it is concise and written in language accessible to academics and nonacademics alike

Argument (complex analysis) · Economics · Economy · Government (linguistics) · Nationalism · Petroleum industry · Political science · Politics · State (computer science) · Engineering · International Development and Aid · Law