Bolivia's Pioneer Fringe

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Geographical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Geographical Review. NUMBER 1 BOLIVIA'S PIONEER FRINGE J. VALERIE FIFER r NHE boundaries of Bolivia today enclose a territory of some 420,000 square miles, which is about half the size of that claimed at independence in 1825. Even so, Bolivia remains the fifth-largest South American republic (after Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Colombia), with an area roughly equal to that of the British Isles, France, and West Germany combined. But Bolivia contains a mere 3,751,000 persons (1966 official estimate), a remarkably low number, greater only than the populations of Uruguay, Paraguay, and the new state of Guyana, all of which are much smaller in area. The problem is aggravated by the unbalanced composition and living standards of the Bolivian people (about 70 percent Indian, 30 percent mestizo; 75-80 percent illiterate or semiliterate) and by their uneven spatial distribution. About threequarters of the population are concentrated within certain sections of the great Andean core region-the lofty intermontane plateaus and basins of the west, which make up only one-third of the total territory. To the east lies a virtually empty land; for the vast plains of the Norte and the Oriente contain on the average fewer than two persons to a square mile (Fig. 1). The country's basic physical dichotomy, its two opposing worlds of mountains and plains, is thus reproduced in the highly selective pattern of human distribution. Population density declines sharply with distance from the Altiplano, from the mining centers within the Cordillera Real, and from the sheltered intermontane basins of Cochabarnba, Sucre, and Tarija.The successful organization of its territory is fundamental to a state's primary domestic function-the promotion of an efficient relationship between man and the land. In this connection the problems of Bolivia's internal circulation are formidable indeed. Politically, Bolivia's frontier zone consists of a comparatively narrow strip of territory lying just within its international >

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