With all driving to/from Washington DC yesterday, I didn’t get a chance to look over this week’s edition of Tiempo Político.1 But there’s an excellent article by Armandy Méndez Morales, “Superar el culturalismo revolucionario populista [Overcoming populist revolutionary culturalism].”
In it, Méndez argues against the populist temptation of polarizing politics—the politics of confrontation, rather than dialogue. I especially like this bit, which echoes some of my own thoughts on Bolivia’s “populist legacy”:
“Sus antecedentes remotos se encuentran en los gobiernos militares socialistas post guerra del Chaco, le sigue, con audaz ahínco, el patético proceso de la revolución nacional del 52, y, en mayor o menor medida, todo lo vivido desde esos años hasta el momento.”
I outline the history of Bolivia’s populist legacy in chapter 3 of my dissertation (“The Ghosts of 1952”).
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1 Tiempo Político is a weekly supplement published by La Razón (La Paz) & edited by Carlos Toranzo, director of Instituto Latinoamericano de Investigaciones Sociales (ILDIS) in Bolivia. ILDIS is supported by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), a foundation tied to Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD).