Violent Strike of Bolivian Miners Confused by Nazi-Peronist Politics

Juan Robles

Labor Action, 20th June, 1949

Workers Caught in the Middle

[...] The Republican Union regime wished to behead the planned rebellion and deported the main leaders of the Miners’ Federation [Lechin, Torres, etc.] which at the time was affiliated with the MNR. As the MNR had foreseen such a move, it had previously prepared a counter-stroke, ordering a general strike and the seizure of the American and other engineers as hostages.

Lechin’s lieutenants cruelly assassinated some visitors, while on the other side the government laid siege to the headquarters of the Miner’s Federation in order to free the hostages. Both workers and soldiers fell in the fratricidal struggle. Since 500 workers had been taken prisoner, the Miners’ Federation responded with an armed struggle.

As a demonstration of protest against the military measures and massacres, the strike was extended to the factories and the railroads, the latter controlled by the Stalinists. The situation is grave, but the government seems to have control of the situation.

There is no doubt that the class struggle is the core of the tragic situation – the permanent rebellion of the native proletariat against its national exploitation and against foreign imperialism. But this struggle has been deformed and utilised by the native Nazis in order to take revenge and to return to power. In the struggle between the feudal-bourgeois mine interests and imperialism on the one side and the Nazified petty bourgeoisie of the altiplano on the other side, the proletariat plays the part of the live beast of burden for the MNR.

The classic example of this is the policy of the parliamentary deputy Lora, officially affiliated with the Fourth International, who with almost no reservations supports the Nazi, Lechin, and has become his secretary and counsellor. Lora and his friends support the theory of the bourgeois revolution in Bolivia and consider the role of the MNR to be revolutionary. For this reason they have allied themselves with the Nazis against the feudal bourgeoisie. The proletariat pays with blood and massacres for this policy.

Independent Unions Out

In revolutionary Socialist circles attempts were made to prevent the tragedy and disaster which struck the Bolivian proletariat. Independent miners’ unions were formed in order to free the mining proletariat from the native Nazi influence. It was all in vain.

The independent union in Catavi was isolated by Lechin’s groups and its leaders threatened with death. On the other hand the Patino enterprise and the government tried to thwart the independent character of the newly created union organisation in order to utilize it for their anti-working class purposes.

Although the independent trade union movement extended to all the mining centres, it lacked leading working class elements who were class conscious and incorruptible in order to strengthen it and keep it firm against the Nazi terror and the governmental pressure. The growth of the independent unions was one of the causes compelling the Nazis to act. The threatened liquidation of its base in the mining centres was the equivalent of a death sentence for the MNR.

The Bolivian government headed by the Republican Union Party is a government more of the centre than of the bourgeois right, which has paid more respect to the rights of the working class parties and organisations than did the MNR government headed by Villaroel. But after the armed struggle during the elections in La Paz it lost its head and proceeded with hasty brutality without really foreseeing the consequences.

Prospect Threatening

Today Bolivia represents a field of open civil struggle between the mining bourgeoisie and the Nazified petty bourgeoisie. The proletariat is the principle army on the side of the MNR. Lora, parliamentary deputy of the POR [Revolutionary Workers Party – Fourth International] has taken his place without reservations in the left wing of the MNR.

We do not know how the struggle will end. But we are afraid that the proletariat will lose whichever way the struggle is resolved. If the Nazi MNR should win, it will lose more than if the government triumphs, because the position of the Bolivian proletariat is always that of opposition, both to the Bolivian feudal bourgeoisie, the tool of imperialism, and to the Nazified petty bourgeoisie, the tool of Peronismo.

The position of the Bolivian proletariat was always that of advancing its own independent working class and socialist point of view for the social and national liberation of Bolivia, for a Socialist Bolivia within a Socialist South America.

June l949

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