Bolivia Witnesses Intense Social Drama

Juan Robles

Labor Action, 11th July, 1949

Armed Putsch

After a brief first period of “workers’ socialism” represented by the PSOB [Socialist Workers Party of Bolivia], the Bolivian working class fell under Stalinist influence and then under the sway of the Nazi MNR. Now the miners and industrial unions are controlled by the Nazi clique, the railroad workers by the Stalinists. The working class left has been displaced by petty bourgeois anti – working class forces which exploit the proletariat for their own interests.

While the PSOB, exhausted by an internal crisis, remains isolated and incapable of mass activity, the POR [Revolutionary Workers Party], official section of the Fourth International, has become the left wing of native nationalism. The workers’ movement, caught between two fires, that of the dominant feudo – bourgeois opposition, spontaneously tends to move to the left of the petty bourgeois opposition, acting as cannon fodder for Peronism and Stalinism.[......]

The leaders of the Miners’ Federation, all members of the MNR, Lechin, Torres, Carrer, with the exception of Lora and Vargas, [the latter being affiliated with the POR], had prepared their combat groups to forestall the coming arrests by means of a general strike and the seizure of hostages from the mining companies’ personnel. The government sent military detachments to the mines and besieged the headquarters of the miners’ union, where the hostages were being held [...].

False Theories and Defeats

The proletariat was defeated, not as a conscious Socialist force, but as an army under Nazi – Stalinist command. The independent Socialist and trade union sector did everything possible to save the working class from defeat, to preserve its forces for the authentic working class and Socialist struggle.

Unfortunately, their organizational weakness could not prevent the tragic events. However, their attitude played a role in shaping the spontaneous resistance of the proletariat to the Nazi – Stalinist alliance. If this position had been supported by the POR, Bolivian Section of the Fourth International, perhaps the defeat would have been prevented.

But the policy of the POR was determined as much by the false theory of the bourgeois - democratic revolution in Bolivia as by the false policy and the criminal alliance between Lora and Lechin. Lora, a POR deputy in parliament, declared that the MNR plays a “reformist” role that is unconsciously “revolutionary”, and that he considered it necessary to “push” the MNR by means of the POR toward the “democratic revolution”. The poor fellow did not realise that the POR had become the vanguard of the MNR, and he himself secretary and counsellor of the Nazi boss Lechin. By means of this tactic the PORista Lora became a national deputy, thanks to Lechin and with the blessings of the MNR.

His service to the MNR culminated in the preparation of the “revolution” and the seizure of hostages, and led to the massacre of the workers. His ambition was to become “general director” of the Patino mines, “nationalised” by the MNR.

Poor Lora, the “native Marxist”, forgot that the democratic - bourgeois revolution was inherent in the war of independence carried out by Bolivar and San Martin; that one cannot reverse the wheels of history, and that the only social revolution in South America will be the workers’ and Socialist revolution, which will finish the delayed and unsolved problems of the democratic revolution.

The native proletariat pays with massacres for the errors and ambitions of its petty leaders. Perhaps the bloody disaster will serve as a lesson in the struggle for the Socialist revolution.

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