Background
Bautista Saavedra was bom in La Paz on 30 August 1860.
Bautista Saavedra was bom in La Paz on 30 August 1860.
Completed his legal studies in 1896, and became reknowned as a professor of penal law.
Saavedra was originally a Liberal, but in 1914 he and several other prominent Liberals founded the Republican Party, of which he became second vice president. In the Republican Party, “revolution” of July 1920, the Liberal government fell and Saavedra organized an interim governing junta. A national convention in December 1920 split the Republican Party over the rival presidential candidacies of Saavedra, Daniel Salamanca Urey, and two other members of the junta. Saavedra became chief of the Socialist Republican Party and Salamanca leader of the Genuine Republicans. The schism between these two parties and political chieftains dominated public life in the 1920s.
The national convention elected Bautista Saavedra president of the republic for 1921-1925. His term was punctuated by 48 insurrectionary plots and attempted coups, and live cabinet reorganizations.
Based on an agreement with his party, Saavedra transferred the presidency to his rival. Hernando Siles Reyes and became minister to various European governments and to the League of Nations. Exiled in June 1936 by the military socialist government of David Toro, Saavedra died in Santiago de Chile.
The achievements of his “plebeian government” included a new electoral law, legislation that established an 8-hour workday and legalized strikes, and a reform of mining taxes that doubled government revenues from tin exports. He vigorously pursued negotiations of the Tacna-Arica problem with Chile.
Through Saavedra, North American economic interests expanded in Bolivia. He negotiated a $33 million loan with New York banks, under terms of high interest rates and external control over Bolivia's tax system. This and the extremely favorable concessions to Standard Oil provoked rival political parties to call his government antinational. Although his mildly reformist labor legislation attracted the support of lower and middle classes, harsh repression of a strike in Uncía Mines and the Indian uprising in the highland town of Jesús de Machaca in 1923 aroused wide resentment.
