Carlos Montenegro

Carlos Montenegro Quiroga (26 December 1903 – 10 March 1953) was a Bolivian lawyer, journalist, politician, and writer who served as minister of agriculture from 1943 to 1944.

He was the principal political theorist of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, co-founding the party newspaper La Calle which laid the ideological bases of the party.

Carlos Montenegro was born on 26 December 1903 in Cochabamba to Rodolfo Montenegro Guzmán and Raquel Quiroga.

Montenegro Guzmán was a writer and politician who, as chief of police, was accredited with having commanded the actions that led to the deaths of the American outlaws Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, while Quiroga was the daughter of a well-to-do landowning family.

Montenegro was the second of five siblings —two boys and three girls.

While they initially enjoyed a relatively comfortable childhood on the family estate, their property was eventually confiscated, and their assets were significantly reduced due to debts.

At age eighteen, Montenegro entered the field of journalism, working for the avant-garde weekly magazine Arte y Trabajo.

First published on 21 February 1921 with a circulation of 500 copies, the small print headed by Cesáreo Capriles López covered political issues under an individualist anarchist lens, espousing apoliticism, anti-clericalism, and libertarian education.

The newspaper gained a modest reception and attracted young intellectuals such as Montenegro.

His work for the outlet caused him to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church the following year on charges of heresy for having referred to Bishop of Cochabamba Francisco Pierini as "motley" and for calling Jesus Christ a figure without "divinity" in one of his publications.

Soon after, he studied law at the Higher University of San Simón, where he graduated as a lawyer in 1925.

Montenegro's entry into politics came in 1926 when he worked as sub-prefect of Quillacollo.

The following year, he joined the National Union —later Nationalist— Party of President Hernando Siles Reyes.

For having collaborated with the "tyrant Siles", the Bolivian University Federation declared him an "enemy of the youth".

In 1927, he married María Quiroga Vargas, a poet, writer, and teacher, with whom he had two children: Mario and Martha.

However, they divorced just four years later.

Nonetheless, Montenegro continued his work for Arte y Trabajo —at one point becoming its director— until 1929.

Montenegro was twenty-nine years old when in 1932, the Chaco War erupted.

Despite enlisting to serve on the front, he never wielded arms, eventually rising to the position of propaganda inspector of the General Staff.

During his time in the General Staff, he cultivated a relationship with the war correspondent Augusto Céspedes with whom he shared a similar political vision and a distaste for the liberal status quo.

In 1934, a year before the end of the war, he was discharged to La Paz due to a stomach ulcer.

During this time, he married Yolanda Céspedes, Augusto's sister, and started a law firm.

In 1936, together with Augusto Céspedes and Armando Arce, Montenegro founded the left-wing morning newspaper La Calle.

The publication was the party press of the United Socialist Party (PSU), of which Montenegro was the secretary-general.

During the tumultuous events of May 1936, the PSU supported the historic national strikes against the government.

On 15 May, Montenegro signed a formal alliance on behalf of the PSU with the Workers' Federation of Labor (FOT).

The following night, a "Revolutionary Committee" was formed, composed of Montenegro and other left-wing agitators, which occupied and raised the red flag over several government buildings of La Paz.

The rebellion was the culmination of weeks of protests and strikes and resulted in left-wing elements of the military ousting the conservative government of President José Luis Tejada Sorzano.

During the government of Colonel David Toro —who was made president of the newly installed government junta— Montenegro soon became seen as a potential threat.

His increasing demands for a higher degree of socialism, including policies that Toro could not immediately implement due to political circumstances, caused the president to fear that, if left unsatisfied, the man who masterminded the overthrow of Tejada Sorzano might do the same to him.

As a result, Toro quickly moved to assign Montenegro a chore that would take him as far away from political play as possible.

The president pressured Montenegro to travel to Argentina, where he served as secretary-general and counselor of the Bolivian delegation to the Chaco Peace Conference in Buenos Aires.

On 3 December 1936, he arrived in the Argentine capital, beginning a two-month stint which was ultimately extended for another two-and-a-half years.

During Montenegro's de facto exile in Argentina, he became a member of the country's cultural life.

During his stay, Montenegro established connections with such figures as the Argentine diplomat Honorio Pueyrredón, the historian Gabriel del Mazo, the socialist Alfredo Palacios, and the writer Ricardo Rojas, as well as the Peruvian politician Luis Alberto Sánchez, with whom he formed a lifelong bond.

According to his wife: "all these illustrious characters showed great admiration and respect for Carlos; they appreciated him for his talents as a cultured, erudite, talented, and humorous man; in the conversations, there was a high level of culture and great knowledge of world problems".

Though Montenegro returned to La Paz on multiple occasions, they were always for personal reasons and never permanent.

Even when Toro was overthrown, and Montenegro's close friend Germán Busch was installed in the Palacio Quemado, the figures nearest to the new president —most notably his personal secretary Gabriel Gosálvez, who viewed Montenegro poorly— ensured that Busch never recalled him from his diplomatic post.

Montenegro was still in Argentina when, in 1939, he received the news that Busch had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

His most famous work, Nacionalismo y coloniaje (1943), an essay on the influence of journalism in the history of Bolivia, is considered to be one of the most influential works in Bolivian historiography.