“The Chaco War deserves more attention than it has received. Robert Niebuhr ties in the conflict not just to international relations but to the internal political evolution of the participants, an aspect that has been even more ignored, if that is possible. The lessons he brings out have a bearing on the political development of Bolivia and Paraguay as well as on all the heirs of the Spanish Empire in the Western Hemisphere.”—Bruce Farcau, author of The Chaco War: Bolivia and Paraguay, 1932–1935
“Undergraduate and graduate students alike will employ this accessible study to discover how Chaco War veterans, Indigenous peasants, students, miners, and perhaps most notably Bolivian women— the ‘Generation of the Chaco’—pushed for greater political influence and a better life. To understand how collective activism undermined elite control, extended state hegemony, and transformed Bolivia in the revolution of 1952, read this impressive book.”—René Harder Horst, author of A History of Indigenous Latin America, Aymara to Zapatistas