Bolivia’s Radical Tradition: Permanent Revolution in the Andes, S. Sándor John, Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2009 ‘I Sweat the Flavor of Tin’: Labor Activism in Early Twentieth-Century Bolivia, Robert L. Smale, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010

Abstract Robert L. Smale’s work looks in detail at the origins of Bolivia’s labour movement in the tin mines of the early twentieth century. This provides a good starting point for an account of the rapid rise of Trotskyism in the period leading up to the national revolution of 1952, a phenomenon described in detail in S. Sándor John’s book. Sándor John’s work in particular is important in understanding both the strengths and limitations of the Trotskyist POR, which was not able to displace rival nationalist organisations to achieve political hegemony in the struggles of the second half of the twentieth century.