Agustín Gamarra

Antonio José de Sucre succeeds Bolívar in January 1826 and continues to rule by decree.

He is formally installed as Bolivia's first elected president after the Constituent Assembly convenes in May and elects him.

During his three-year rule, the government tries to solve its grave financial problems, which are aggravated by the lack of foreign credit.

Sucre reforms the existing tax structure in an effort to finance public expenditures and tries to revive silver mining by attracting foreign capital and technology.

In one of the most radical attacks on the church anywhere in Latin America, he confiscates church wealth in Bolivia and closes down many monasteries.

The Roman Catholic Church in Bolivia will never recover the powerful role that it had held.

Import duties and taxes on the internal movement of goods are also important sources of state revenue.

In addition, Sucre reestablishes tribute payments in an attempt to solve the country's financial crisis.

Sucre's attempts at reform are only partially successful because Bolivia lacks the administration to carry them out.

Many Conservative Party criollos turn away when his reforms threaten to challenge the economic and social patterns of the colonial past.

As opposition increases, the local nationalist elite comes to resent the leadership of their Venezuelan-born president.

The invasion of Bolivia by the Peruvian general Agustin Gamarra and an assassination attempt in April 1827 lead to Sucre's resignation in 1828.

Peru's transition from more than three centuries of colonial rule to nominal independence in 1824 under President Bolivar (1824-26) proves tortuous and politically destablizing.

Independence does little to alter the fundamental structures of inequality and underdevelopment based on colonialism and Andean neo-feudalism.

Essentially, independence represents the transfer of power from Spanish-born whites (peninsulares) to sectors of the elite Creole class, whose aim is to preserve and enhance their privileged socioeconomic status.

However, the new Creole elite is unable to create a stable, new constitutional order to replace the crown monolith of church and state.

Nor is it willing to restructure the social order in a way conducive to building a viable democratic, republican government.

Ultimately, the problem is one of replacing the legitimacy of the old order with an entirely new one, something that many post-colonial regimes have difficulty accomplishing.

By one count, Peru experiences at least twenty-four regime changes, averaging one per year between 1821 and 1845, and the constitution is rewritten six times.

This is not to say that larger political issues do not inform these conflicts.

A revisionist study by historian Paul E. Gootenberg shows in great detail how the politics of trade (free or protectionist) and regionalism were central to the internecine caudillo struggles of the period.

In this interpretation, nationalist elites—backing one caudillo or another—manage to outmaneuver and defeat liberal groups to maintain a largely protectionist, neomercantilistic, post- colonial regime until the advent of the guano boom at mid-century.

This view stands in opposition to the dominant interpretation of the period, according to which unrestricted liberalism and free trade led to Peru's "dependency" on the international economy and the West.

A particularly virulent form of Andean caudillismo surges into the political vacuum left by the collapse of Spanish rule.

Caudillo strongmen, often officers from the liberation armies, manage to seize power through force of arms and the elaboration of extensive and intricate clientelistic alliances.

Personalistic, arbitrary rule replaces the rule of law, and a prolonged and often byzantine struggle for power is waged at all levels of society.

The upshot is internal political fragmentation and chronic political instability during the first two decades of the post-independence era.

Antonio José de Sucre, Bolivia's first president, leaves the country for voluntary exile, convinced that "the solution was impossible."

Given troop command by Gran Colombia's Simón Bolívar, however, Sucre routs Peruvian General Gamarra 's much larger force (eight thousand) in a decisive battle at Tarqui on February 27, 1829.

Santa Cruz continues his political ambitions in Peru while president of Bolivia.

He establishes the Peru-Bolivia Confederation in 1836, justifying his act with the threat of Chile's expansion to the north.

This threat, together with the constant turmoil in Peru and repeated attempts by Gamarra to invade Bolivia, had made Sucre's military intervention in a Peruvian civil war in 1835 a matter of life and death for Bolivia.

After winning a number of battles in Peru, Santa Cruz had reorganized that country into two autonomous states—Northern Peru and Southern Peru—and joined them with Bolivia in the Peru-Bolivia Confederation with himself as protector.

The potential power of this confederation arouses the opposition of Argentina and, above all, Chile; both nations declare war on the confederation.

Although Santa Cruz repels an attack by Argentina, he fails to stop the Chilean expansion into the disputed territories on its northern frontier.

His decisive defeat by Chilean forces in the Battle of Yungay in January 1839 results in the breakup of the confederation and ends the career of Bolivia's ablest nineteenth-century president.

Santa Cruz goes into exile in Ecuador.

Santa Cruz creates a relatively stable economic, social, and political order in Bolivia.

In an attempt to overcome Bolivia's isolation, Santa Cruz opens the port of Cobija on the Pacific Coast.

He also devalues the silver currency to finance government activities, institutes protective tariffs in support of the local cotton cloth (tucuyo) industry, and reduces the mining tax, thereby increasing mining output.

In addition, Santa Cruz codifies the country's laws and enacts Latin America's first civil and commercial codes.

The Higher University of San Andres in La Paz is also founded during his rule.

Although Santa Cruz approves a democratic constitution, he rules virtually as a dictator and does not tolerate opposition.

Despite the fall of his government, Sucre's policies form the basis for the ten-year rule of Andrés de Santa Cruz y Calahumana (1829-39), the first native-born president, who is sworn into office in May 1829 after a series of short-term rulers.

Santa Cruz, a mestizo, had had a brilliant military career fighting for independence in the armies of Bolívar.

His close connection with Bolívar had led to a short interlude as the president of Peru in 1826.

It also made him a strong candidate to become Bolivia's new president after Sucre's resignation.

On the other hand, the large-scale importation of British textiles after independence virtually destroys the production of native artisans and obrajes, which are unable to compete with their more technologically advanced and cost-efficient overseas competitors.

For the most part, however, the economy will continue in the immediate decades after independence to be characterized by a low level of marketable surplus from largely self-sufficient haciendas and native communities.