Bolivia's National Revolution Martyrs' Day

Commemoration serves as the primary means by which nation-states perpetuate historical memory. Historian Luis Antezana argues that the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) instituted the 1952 Revolution as a "new independence" (Antezana, 1983:66).

With state institutions increasingly entrenched, the post-revolutionary government took it upon itself to infuse secular time with nationalist historical memory. In the months immediately following the April insurrection, state officials introduced a revolutionary calendar commemorating important moments in the revolutionary nationalist struggle. The "Day of Nationalist Faith" (May 5) honored the altruistic struggles of citizens; the "Bolivia's National Revolution Martyrs' Day" (July 21) revered all those who had sacrificed their lives in the name of the Revolution; the "Factory Worker Day" (May 18) exalted the participation of workers in the revolutionary struggle by commemorating the Villa Victoria massacre in 1950. In fact, the revolutionary calendar was so extensive that in 1955 the archbishop of La Paz lamented that "civil holidays proliferated exaggeratedly" and asked the president to "reduce the number of holidays".