Bolivia

In Bolivia, the late nineteenth-century desire for order, progress, and a modern nation with a civilized population reflected the influence of Social Darwinism. Bolivian discussions about civilization and progress focused on the country’s racial composition. To expand the white population and decrease the indigenous population, the government sought European immigrants and tried to prevent racial mixing between those of European descent and Bolivia’s indigenous population. However, because white immigrants were not attracted to Bolivia, eugenic proponents turned their attention to “improving” the existing population.

Political elites tried to prevent the degeneration of the Bolivian race primarily by “redeeming” the indigenous population. Ultimately, they focused the conversation on racial miscegenation or mestizaje. Renowned authors like Alcides Arguedas argued that mixed-race individuals, or mestizos, caused the nation’s problems and that Indians needed to be isolated to prevent their degeneration and corruption by modern society (Irurozqui, 2001). The “Indian Problem” became more pressing in the early twentieth century as economic growth and labour requirements necessitated that Indians and non-Indians come into closer contact with one another. Increasing rural to urban migration led urban elites to integrate the indigenous population into the modernizing nation through public health programs, economic inclusion, and education (Zulawski, 2007).

These elites believed eugenics programs could culturally whiten the indigenous population. Although proponents participated in hemispheric eugenics conferences in the 1920s and 1930s, like other Latin Americans they advocated a soft, or positive, eugenics based on Larmarckian ideas rather than negative eugenics derived from Mendelian genetics. Bolivian eugenics programs were related to moral reform movements, addressing issues such as alcohol consumption, prostitution, and concubinage, and public health efforts targeting hygiene, sanitation, and venereal disease (Zulawski, 2007). Additionally, in the 1940s state leaders identified women and children as central to national improvement and racial advancement. The government sought to enact a range of social programs to create strong families, improve children’s health and welfare, and encourage population growth. Laws passed included government approved family subsidies, paternity tests, and legalized common law unions, albeit only after great debate. These laws raised issues about women’s rights and children’s equality. Subsequently, congressional delegates, women’s groups, elite professionals such as lawyers and doctors, and Church representatives disagreed about whether they were a moral triumph or an unnecessary state intervention. Common-law unions were especially divisive; proponents said the law would legalize extramarital unions and protect women and children from abandonment, while opponents thought it would encourage immoral sexual relations and procreation outside legal marriage. The debate also raised the issue of children’s equality in relation to illegitimacy. Since the law would make illegitimate children eligible for inheritance, elite women’s groups and Church officials argued it would undermine legal marriage and traditional family structure (Gotkowitz, 2007).

Policies also targeted individuals perceived as mentally deficient or physically unfit. In 1943, Emilio Fernández, the director of the mental hospital in Sucre, encouraged racial improvement without resorting to euthanasia, though he suggested preventing the youth or the elderly from procreating. Other psychiatrists took a more aggressive stance, proposing selective sterilization for criminals, delinquent psychopaths, alcoholics, and people with mental illness (Zulawski, 2007).

By the 1960s, global concerns about overpopulation, especially in the Third World, influenced Bolivian politics. The United States, in particular, stressed the need to control population growth in the developing world. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Bolivian government received unprecedented amounts of U.S. aid in the form of food assistance, military material, and economic support. For this reason the U.S. had influence over Bolivian policies, and U.S. eugenics ideas affected social programs. Since Bolivia was a predominantly Catholic country whose leaders considered it to be underpopulated instead of overpopulated, Bolivian policy makers and doctors were not particularly supportive of these eugenics programs.

Tensions between the U.S. and Bolivia erupted in 1969, when Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés released his now-famous film Yawar Mallku, or Blood of the Condor. The film dramatized allegations leveled by a local radio show in 1967 that U.S. Peace Corps volunteers were sterilizing indigenous women in the countryside without the women’s knowledge or consent. In reality, Peace Corps volunteers were distributing contraception, and with missionaries’ assistance were inserting IUDs in women on a supposedly voluntary basis. These accusations fueled rumors about widespread U.S.-backed sterilization programs that led to the Peace Corps’ expulsion from Bolivia in 1971 (Geidel, 2010). They also created ongoing mistrust of birth control and population control policies. For instance, distribution of birth control was illegal during the military dictatorships of the late 1960s and 1970s, and even as late as the 1980s rumours circulated that U.S. food aid contained sterilizing agents (Nelson, 2009).

-Nicole Pacino

  • Geidel, M. (2010). “’Sowing Death in Our Women’s Wombs’: Modernization and Indigenous Nationalism in the 1960s Peace Corps and Jorge Sanjines’ Yawar Mallku.” American Quarterly, 62 (3): 763-786.

  • Gotkowitz, L. (2007). A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880-1952. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

  • Irurozqui, M. (2001). “’Desavío al Paraíso’: Citizenship and Social Darwinism in Bolivia, 1880-1920.” In Glick, T. F., Puig-Samper, M. A., & Ruiz, R. (Eds.), The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America, and Brazil (pp. 205-227). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

  • Nelson, E. (2009). Birth Rights: Bolivia's Politics of Race, Region, and Motherhood, 1964-2005. PhD. Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Zulawski, Ann. (2007). Unequal Cures: Public Health and Political Change in Bolivia, 1900-1950. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Bolivia

In Bolivia, the late nineteenth-century desire for order, progress, and a modern nation with a civilized population reflected the influence of Social Darwinism. Bolivian discussions about civilization and progress focused on the country’s racial composition. To expand the white population and decrease the indigenous population, the government sought European immigrants and tried to prevent racial mixing between those of European descent and Bolivia’s indigenous population. However, because white immigrants were not attracted to Bolivia, eugenic proponents turned their attention to “improving” the existing population.

Political elites tried to prevent the degeneration of the Bolivian race primarily by “redeeming” the indigenous population. Ultimately, they focused the conversation on racial miscegenation or mestizaje. Renowned authors like Alcides Arguedas argued that mixed-race individuals, or mestizos, caused the nation’s problems and that Indians needed to be isolated to prevent their degeneration and corruption by modern society (Irurozqui, 2001). The “Indian Problem” became more pressing in the early twentieth century as economic growth and labour requirements necessitated that Indians and non-Indians come into closer contact with one another. Increasing rural to urban migration led urban elites to integrate the indigenous population into the modernizing nation through public health programs, economic inclusion, and education (Zulawski, 2007).

These elites believed eugenics programs could culturally whiten the indigenous population. Although proponents participated in hemispheric eugenics conferences in the 1920s and 1930s, like other Latin Americans they advocated a soft, or positive, eugenics based on Larmarckian ideas rather than negative eugenics derived from Mendelian genetics. Bolivian eugenics programs were related to moral reform movements, addressing issues such as alcohol consumption, prostitution, and concubinage, and public health efforts targeting hygiene, sanitation, and venereal disease (Zulawski, 2007). Additionally, in the 1940s state leaders identified women and children as central to national improvement and racial advancement. The government sought to enact a range of social programs to create strong families, improve children’s health and welfare, and encourage population growth. Laws passed included government approved family subsidies, paternity tests, and legalized common law unions, albeit only after great debate. These laws raised issues about women’s rights and children’s equality. Subsequently, congressional delegates, women’s groups, elite professionals such as lawyers and doctors, and Church representatives disagreed about whether they were a moral triumph or an unnecessary state intervention. Common-law unions were especially divisive; proponents said the law would legalize extramarital unions and protect women and children from abandonment, while opponents thought it would encourage immoral sexual relations and procreation outside legal marriage. The debate also raised the issue of children’s equality in relation to illegitimacy. Since the law would make illegitimate children eligible for inheritance, elite women’s groups and Church officials argued it would undermine legal marriage and traditional family structure (Gotkowitz, 2007).

Policies also targeted individuals perceived as mentally deficient or physically unfit. In 1943, Emilio Fernández, the director of the mental hospital in Sucre, encouraged racial improvement without resorting to euthanasia, though he suggested preventing the youth or the elderly from procreating. Other psychiatrists took a more aggressive stance, proposing selective sterilization for criminals, delinquent psychopaths, alcoholics, and people with mental illness (Zulawski, 2007).

By the 1960s, global concerns about overpopulation, especially in the Third World, influenced Bolivian politics. The United States, in particular, stressed the need to control population growth in the developing world. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Bolivian government received unprecedented amounts of U.S. aid in the form of food assistance, military material, and economic support. For this reason the U.S. had influence over Bolivian policies, and U.S. eugenics ideas affected social programs. Since Bolivia was a predominantly Catholic country whose leaders considered it to be underpopulated instead of overpopulated, Bolivian policy makers and doctors were not particularly supportive of these eugenics programs.

Tensions between the U.S. and Bolivia erupted in 1969, when Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés released his now-famous film Yawar Mallku, or Blood of the Condor. The film dramatized allegations leveled by a local radio show in 1967 that U.S. Peace Corps volunteers were sterilizing indigenous women in the countryside without the women’s knowledge or consent. In reality, Peace Corps volunteers were distributing contraception, and with missionaries’ assistance were inserting IUDs in women on a supposedly voluntary basis. These accusations fueled rumors about widespread U.S.-backed sterilization programs that led to the Peace Corps’ expulsion from Bolivia in 1971 (Geidel, 2010). They also created ongoing mistrust of birth control and population control policies. For instance, distribution of birth control was illegal during the military dictatorships of the late 1960s and 1970s, and even as late as the 1980s rumours circulated that U.S. food aid contained sterilizing agents (Nelson, 2009).

-Nicole Pacino

  • Geidel, M. (2010). “’Sowing Death in Our Women’s Wombs’: Modernization and Indigenous Nationalism in the 1960s Peace Corps and Jorge Sanjines’ Yawar Mallku.” American Quarterly, 62 (3): 763-786.

  • Gotkowitz, L. (2007). A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880-1952. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

  • Irurozqui, M. (2001). “’Desavío al Paraíso’: Citizenship and Social Darwinism in Bolivia, 1880-1920.” In Glick, T. F., Puig-Samper, M. A., & Ruiz, R. (Eds.), The Reception of Darwinism in the Iberian World: Spain, Spanish America, and Brazil (pp. 205-227). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

  • Nelson, E. (2009). Birth Rights: Bolivia's Politics of Race, Region, and Motherhood, 1964-2005. PhD. Diss. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

  • Zulawski, Ann. (2007). Unequal Cures: Public Health and Political Change in Bolivia, 1900-1950. Durham and London: Duke University Press.