# David Toro

José David Toro Ruilova (24 June 1898 – 25 July 1977) was a Bolivian military officer and politician who served as the 35th president of Bolivia from 1936 to 1937. He previously served as minister of development and minister of government in 1930.
In 1936, a a coup d'état in La Paz installed Toro as president of a government junta. He presided over an experimental period of military socialism [es] in Bolivia that introduced moderate socialist reforms. The Ministry of Labor was established, a new labor code implemented, and the rights of women expanded. Toro instituted YPFB as the state-owned petroleum enterprise, established a state monopoly on the sale of hydrocarbons, and nationalized the holdings of Standard Oil in 1937.
Toro's regime drew support from members of the veterans' movement. In 1937, dissatisfied with the slow pace of reforms, Toro was forced to resign in a soft coup. He was succeeded as president by his protégé and comrade-in-arms, Germán Busch. Toro made one final attempt at power in 1938 but was unsuccessful and he slipped into obscurity. Exiled to Chile, he died in Santiago in 1977.

## Biography

Installed in the Palacio Quemado, Toro immediately faced a number of pressing crises, not least of which were a massive federal deficit stemming from the war and continued economic dislocation associated with the ongoing Great Depression. More narrowly, he tackled a dispute with the Standard Oil Corporation, which had been at least not supportive enough of Bolivia during the war and at most, downright duplicitous and disloyal to the country. Apparently, a number of grave irregularities had been committed, including alleged smuggling of Bolivian oil to Argentina, Paraguay's most steadfast (if always under the table) supporter. In March 1937, the Toro government nationalized all Standard Oil holdings in Bolivia to the rejoicing of much of the population. This nationalization would prove to be the first step toward the statism that would characterize Bolivian politics in subsequent decades.
Moreover, the nationalization signaled the beginning of the end of the Oligarchic Republic, inaugurated in 1880 upon Bolivia's devastating loss to Chile in the War of the Pacific. This was a period of civilian control of Bolivian politics and little intervention of the army in the political process, except on brief occasions and always either on behalf of a civilian caudillo or in order to call elections. The Chaco War, however, had changed everything. Tens of thousands of Bolivian Indians had been conscripted to fight in the war and had made major sacrifices on behalf of a government that discriminated against them and barred them any meaningful participation in national affairs. Coincidentally, the 1930s had witnessed the onset of much political ferment throughout the world, and Bolivia was not completely at the margin of those trends. During the turbulent, crisis-racked decade, a number of Communist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, anarchist, and reformist parties had been created, and new currents of thought began to call for major changes in Bolivian society. Toro and the young officers who had installed him called their experiment "Military Socialism," but, fearful of the still considerable power of the economic elites, failed to go far enough with their reforms. Still, an important new Worker's Law was unveiled, spelling a wider set of rights for working men and women.
In the end, Toro was caught between the cross currents of reformers from the left, and the interests of a mining magnate. On 13 July 1937, Toro resigned the presidency and Lieutenant Colonel Germán Busch assumed the presidency. Toro attempted to dislodge Busch from power a year after his ouster, but his coup attempt failed and he sought exile in Chile, where he died on 25 July 1977, at the age of 79.

## Publications

* Toro Ruilova, David (1941). Mi actuación en la Guerra del Chaco: La retirada de Picuiba (in Spanish). La Paz: Editorial Renacimiento. OCLC 1255856243.