From the mines to the streets : a Bolivian activist's life / Benjamin Kohl and Linda C Farthing ; with Félix Muruchi.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Tiwanaku, January 21, 2006 -- Introduction to Bolivia -- Rural life -- Moving to the mines -- The army -- Introduction: Life in the nationalized mines -- Joining the state company -- Union activist -- Bolivia under Banzer -- Exile in Chile: A "guest" of Pinochet -- Exile in Holland -- Return home -- Garcia Meza coup: Back to Holland -- Introduction: El Alto -- Life in El Alto -- Politics in El Alto.

From the mines to the streets draws on the life of Felix Muruchi to depict the greater forces at play in Bolivia and elsewhere in South America during the last half of the twentieth century. It traces Felix from his birth in an indigenous family in 1946, just after the abolition of bonded labor, through the next sixty years of Bolivia's turbulent history. As a teenager, Felix followed his father into the tin mines before serving a compulsory year in the military, during which he witnessed the 1964 coup d'etat that plunged the country into eighteen years of military rule. He returned to work in the mines, where he quickly rose to become a union leader. The reward for his activism was imprisonment, torture, and exile. After he came home, he participated actively in the struggles against neoliberal governments, which led in 2006--the year of his sixtieth birthday--to the inauguration of Evo Morales as Bolivia's first indigenous president.