Trotskyist POR’s New Line –
Bolivian “Left” Goes Along With Regime

Juan Rey

Labor Action, 6th July, 1953

Bureaucratised

Santiago, June 22nd. – [...] We had written in support of the position taken by the Trotskyist POR, but now the POR’s political organ has been adopting a position which is reactionary and disastrous. The POR has always collaborated with the Nationalists, and it helped to raise the Nationalist workers’ bureaucracy – the group led by Juan Lechin – to its present power. While the offensive action of the masses was still going on the POR assumed the role of a “loyal opposition” seeking to push the Nationalist regime into a more radical policy. At this critical point the government started to fight the POR’s influence.

But all that now belongs to the “glorious past”. Now the action of the masses has dwindled to a lower level, and with it has gone the opposition of the POR. Instead of making a turn to the left and engaging in stronger opposition, the POR has adopted the tactic of going along with and collaborating with the government, under the pretence of “saving the revolution”.

On the other hand, the government ushered the Trotskyist “leaders” into very profitable positions in the official machinery, such as the Agrarian Commission, the Stabilization Office, the Workers’ Security Administration, etc. The PORista theoretician, Alaya Mercada, is a member of the Agrarian Commission with a salary of 70,000 pesos, which is l00 per cent higher than a minister’s salary. Another “theoretician” of the POR, Lora, a collaborator of Lechin’s, is now a member of the President’s Stabilization Office. The Secretary of the POR, Moller, is director of the Workers’ Savings Bank [Caja de Seguro y Ahorro Obrera].

Many other POR militants have also gotten good posts in the official government machine. In this way the Nationalist government has liquidated the “Communist” and “Trotskyist” danger in Bolivia, and now the whole Bolivian “left” is collaborating with the regime, with the claim that it is thus “saving the revolution” from capitalist restoration. [...]

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