Country Profiles - Bolivia

BOLIVIA

 

Geography: Landlocked Bolivia is equal in size to California and Texas combined. Brazil forms its eastern border; its other neighbors are Peru and Chile on the west and Argentina and Paraguay on the south. The western part, enclosed by two chains of the Andes, is a great plateau—the Altiplano, with an average altitude of 12,000 ft (3,658 m). Almost half the population lives on the plateau, which contains Oruro, Potosí, and La Paz. At an altitude of 11,910 ft (3,630 m), La Paz is the highest administrative capital city in the world. The Oriente, a lowland region ranging from rain forests to grasslands, comprises the northern and eastern two-thirds of the country. Lake Titicaca, at an altitude of 12,507 ft (3,812 m), is the highest commercially navigable body of water in the world.

Government: Republic.

History: Famous since Spanish colonial days for its mineral wealth, modern Bolivia was once a part of the ancient Inca empire. After the Spaniards defeated the Incas in the 16th century, Bolivia's predominantly Indian population was reduced to slavery. The remoteness of the Andes helped protect the Bolivian Indians from the European diseases that decimated other South American Indians. But the existence of a large indigenous group forced to live under the thumb of their colonizers created a stratified society of haves and have-nots that continues to this day. Income inequality between the largely impoverished Indians who make up two-thirds of the country and the light-skinned European elite remains vast.

By the end of the 17th century, the mineral wealth had begun to dry up. The country won its independence in 1825 and was named after Simón Bolívar, the famous liberator. Hampered by internal strife, Bolivia lost great slices of territory to three neighboring nations. Several thousand square miles and its outlet to the Pacific were taken by Chile after the War of the Pacific (1879–1884). In 1903, a piece of Bolivia's Acre Province, rich in rubber, was ceded to Brazil. And in 1938, after losing the Chaco War of 1932–1935 to Paraguay, Bolivia gave up its claim to nearly 100,000 sq mi of the Gran Chaco. Political instability ensued.
In 1965, a guerrilla movement mounted from Cuba and headed by Maj. Ernesto (Ché) Guevara began a revolutionary war. With the aid of U.S. military advisers, the Bolivian army smashed the guerrilla movement, capturing and killing Guevara on Oct. 8, 1967. A string of military coups followed before the military returned the government to civilian rule in 1982, when Hernán Siles Zuazo became president. At that point, Bolivia was regularly shut down by work stoppages and had the lowest per capita income in South America.
In June 1993, free-market advocate Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was elected president. He was succeeded by former general Hugo Bánzer, an ex-dictator turned democrat who became president for the second time in Aug. 1997. Bánzer made significant progress in wiping out illicit coca production and drug trafficking, which pleased the United States. However, the eradication of coca, a major crop in Bolivia since Incan times, plunged many Bolivian farmers into abject poverty. Although Bolivia sits on South America's second-largest natural gas reserves as well as considerable oil, the country has remained one of the poorest on the continent.
In Aug. 2002, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada again became president, pledging to continue economic reforms and to create jobs. In Oct. 2003, Sánchez resigned after months of rioting and strikes over a gas-exporting project that protesters believed would benefit foreign companies more than Bolivians. His vice president, Carlos Mesa, replaced him. Despite continued unrest, Mesa remained popular during his first two years as president. In a July 2004 referendum on the future of the country's significant natural gas reserves (the second largest in South America), Bolivians overwhelmingly supported Mesa's plan to exert more control over foreign gas companies. Mesa managed to satisfy the strong antiprivatization sentiment among Bolivians without shutting the door on some limited form of privatization in the future. But rising fuel prices in 2005 led to massive protests by tens of thousands of impoverished farmers and miners, and on June 6 Mesa resigned. Supreme court justice Eduardo Rodriguez took over as interim president.

Map of Bolivia

President: Evo Morales (2006)

Land area: 418,683 sq mi (1,084,389 sq km); total area: 424,164 sq mi (1,098,580 sq km)

Population (2014 est.): 10,631,486 (growth rate: 1.6%); birth rate: 23.28/1000; infant mortality rate: 38.61/1000; life expectancy: 68.55

Historic and judicial capital (2011 est.) Sucre, 307,000; Administrative capital: La Paz, 1.715 million

Other large cities: Santa Cruz 1.719 million (2011)

Monetary unit: Boliviano

National name: República de Bolivia

Languages: Spanish (official) 60.7%, Quechua (official) 21.2%, Aymara (official) 14.6%, Guarani (official), foreign languages 2.4%, other 1.2% note: Bolivia's 2009 constitution designates Spanish and all indigenous languages as official; 36 indigenous languages are specified, including some that are extinct (2001 census)

Ethnicity/race: Quechua 30%, mestizo 30%, Aymara 25%, white 15%

National Holiday: Independence Day, August 6

Religion: Roman Catholic 95%, Protestant (Evangelical Methodist) 5%

Literacy rate: 91.2% (2009 est.)

Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2013 est.): $59.11 billion; per capita $5,500. Real growth rate: 6.8%. Inflation: 6.5%. Unemployment: 7.4% in urban areas with widespread underemployment. Arable land: 3.49%. Agriculture: soybeans, coffee, coca, cotton, corn, sugarcane, rice, potatoes; timber. Labor force: 4.922 million; agriculture 32%, industry 27.4%, services 40.6%. Industries: mining, smelting, petroleum, food and beverages, tobacco, handicrafts, clothing. Natural resources: tin, natural gas, petroleum, zinc, tungsten, antimony, silver, iron, lead, gold, timber, hydropower. Exports: $12.16 billion (2013 est.): natural gas, soybeans and soy products, crude petroleum, zinc ore, tin. Imports: $9.282 billion (2013 est.): petroleum products, plastics, paper, aircraft and aircraft parts, prepared foods, automobiles, insecticides, soybeans. Major trading partners: Brazil, U.S. Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, Chile, China, (2012).

Communications: Telephones: main lines in use: 880,600 (2012); mobile cellular: 9.494 (2012). Broadcast media: large number of radio and TV stations broadcasting with private media outlets dominating; state-owned and private radio and TV stations generally operating freely, although both pro-government and anti-government groups have attacked media outlets in response to their reporting (2010). Internet hosts: 180,988 (2012). Internet users: 1.103 million (2009).

Transportation: Railways: total: 3,652 km (2010). Highways: total: 80,488 km; (2010). Waterways: 10,000 km (commercially navigable) (2012). Ports and harbors: Puerto Aguirre (on the Paraguay/Parana waterway, at the Bolivia/Brazil border); also, Bolivia has free port privileges in maritime ports in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Paraguay. Airports: 855 (2013 est.).

International disputes: Chile and Peru rebuff Bolivia's reactivated claim to restore the Atacama corridor, ceded to Chile in 1884, but Chile offers instead unrestricted but not sovereign maritime access through Chile for Bolivian natural gas; contraband smuggling, human trafficking, and illegal narcotic trafficking are problems in the porous areas of the border with Argentina.

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