INEVITABLE The following article, dated January 31, 1974, is translated from Combate, journal of the POR (Partido Obero Revolucionario -- Revelutionary Workers party), Bolivian section of the Fourth International. The analyses we made in 1973 have been strictly confirmed. The Bolivian political situation is characterized by the constant deterioration of the military dictatorship, the bourgeoisie, and imperialism and by the new rise of a revitalized workers movement supported by sections of the peasantry and the middle classes that have also gone into motion. Once again the political process is leading toward confrontation. The various elements of this situation, which we have to follow in the most attentive fashion, are these: an insoluble economic crisis; the monetary stabilization decreed in October 1972 on the basis of a currency devaluation of about 70 percent has failed. Consequently, the purchasing power of currency has declined. The wage carner: have therefore suffered a loss in buying power while prices have ceaselessly risen. The year 1973 can be characterized as the year of the great inflation. During this same period, there have been
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And finally, the internal regime in the Soviet Union is challenged. Only an incorrigible bureaucrat would dare to write: "while Soviet democracy is expanding throughout the socialist society that has developed in the USSR. . .. The criticisms that we have been discussing come from a Communist party that has a reformist line. It is trying to replace the Franco regime with a bourgeois-democratic one through an alliance with sections of the bourgeoisic and without revolutionary struggle. The source of the criticisms is the fact that the Kremlin's policy is creating an embarrassment for the bureaucrats of the Spanish CP. They indicate to some extent the lines of cleavage within the Communist parties. Objectively, these criticisms weaken the monolithic structure of the Communist parties. While they may be made in order to bolster a right-wing orientation, they open up greater possibilities for gaining a hearing within these parties for a fundamental revolutionary Marxist critique of these policies. That critique is getting strong support from the revolutionary rise of the mosses, especially in Western Europe.
-PIERRE FRANK→ CONFRONTATION 1 three important increases in the prices of basic consumer goods. These increases have seriously struck af the wages of workers, the incomes of technical sectors and professionals, the savings of employees in commerce and banking, and so on. THE YEAR OF THE GREAT INFLATION But these measures have also hit the peasantry, which has rapidly found itself confronted by a contracted market due to the lowering of the income of the workers, and the increases in the prices of commodities, a consequence of the increase in transport costs. Concurrently, a new phenomenon has appeared in Bolivia: shortages of basic products like rice, sugar, coffee, and meat. Previously, production of these items had been sufficient not only to satisfy national consumption but also to leave a surplus for export. The world situation, characterized by a crisis of food products and an increase in taxes on these products, has led producers to send the greater part of their production to the external market in search of stronger currencies and more favorable
tax rates. Hence, the internal needs of the country can no longer be satisfied and shortages have developed, accompanied by long lines in front of stores and by speculation. The Banzer govemment, an instrument of private and imperialist companies, acts as the police protector of all these financial machinations. Its dependence and servility have led it to subordinate itself to English, North American, and Brazilian imperialists, who are buying Bolivian raw materials at prices inferior to those of the world market. That is why the current rise in raw materials prices on the world market cannot result in economic gains for Bolivia. Moreover, the dictatorship, pressed by the shortage of foodstuffs, has offered "its" solution to the problem with the economic measures of January 21, 1974, measures that protect the interests of the big producers and strike at the workers. These measures set the Bolivian prices of these basic products at the same level as the world market prices. The Bolivian economy is going through a crisis that will not be solved under the present regime. The regime has promised development based on massive infusions of capital. But this requires not only economic facilities and advantages for investors, but above all and fundamentally social peace and political security, which, despite the criminal foscist repression, do not exist in Bolivia. Consequently, there has been no capital investment on a grand scale. What investment has come in has been weak, aimed at bolstering up a few companies in the eastern part of the country, or else has been purely political in nature, aimed at supporting the dictatorship. In fact, capital is flowing out of Bolivia and the country's natural resources are being plundered. From an economic standpoint, 1973 was a negative year; 1974 was begun with a packet of measures decreed by the dictatorship in the context of political and social instability that had arisen in 1973 and was continuing. In this economic and social situation, made worse by official policy, the masses again began to enter into struggle for the first time since the defeat of August 21, 1971, when the dictatorship seized power. In fact, the economic decrees of October 27, 1972, had triggered a mobilization of the workers movement around the question of defense of the workers living standards After the explosive popular reaction that broke out in the major cities -- especially in La Paz, where once again barricades went up -- a tenacious resistance movement was organized, beginning in the trade unions. None of the workers organizations accepted the government measures, and protest strikes broke out one after another. There were petitions demanding higher wage increases to make up for the loss in purchasing power caused by the currency devaluation. The rank-and-file mobilizations swept away the weaknesses that initially appeared among the union leaderships. The backbone of the movement was the printing, banking, and commercial sectors, and the mine workers, who initiated the mobilization and developed the critiques of the policy of the fascist Banzer. THE CLASHES IN COCHABAMBA In Cochebamba, a densely populated peasant area and a historic center of agrarian reform, the Cliza Peasant Union, entering into conflict with the national bureaucracy of the peasant unions, mjected the currency devaluations. It was here that the first closhes with the army took place. Eventually, the civic, patriotic, and religious organizations joined in the workers protest movement. The military government soon found itself confronted by the forward march of the new movement. It was forced to open negotiations on the workers demands, to enter into agreements with the union leaderships, and to make a few concessions. For the government, it was a question of preventing the movement from unifying or becoming centralized around a united leadership. The government agreed to recognize the functioning of the regional and sectoral trade-union federations that accepted compromises; in this way the dictatorship was going to permit the raising of partial demands of an economic character in order to maintain the division of the workers movement into atomized units that could be negotiated with or fought separately. But the agreements the dictatorship worked out with the union leaders were quickly annuled by the inflationary spiral and the reaction of the rank and file, who demanded new concossions. Banzer had to invoke the state security law -- under the pretext of fighting speculation. But in reality, his aim was to contain the popular mobilizations taking shape. By the end of 1973 the workers movement was reody for struggle. The November 19 miners conference, held openly at Potosi, represented a synthesis of the progress made in the recomposition of the workers movement. As in the past, the mine workers showed the way. Starting from the economic demands raised by the brood Bolivian mosses, they moved on to a revolutionary political opposition to the dictatorship. They ratified the socialist theses of the miners union and condemned the whole policy of the regime. The national federations of manufacturing and construction developed other active centers of opposition. And among white-collar workers, the bank employees continued their tradition of resistance. But in that sector something new happened: The Federation of Commercial Employees, which joined the mobilizations, was revitalized and went on strike after several decades of passivity. December 1973 saw the development of trade-union mobilizations around political problems -- among others the question of amnesty for all political and trade-union militants imprisoned or exiled since Banzer's coup in August 1971 -which were discussed on a national scale, and around the elections planned by the dictatorship for an unknown date. In the absence of revolutionary political parties, which, because of the underground conditions imposed on them, could express themselves only in a very limited way, it was the trade-union organizations that openly took positions on these At the beginning of the year tensions within the workers movement became exacerbated. That was why the explosion was immediate when the economic measures of January 21 were announced. The key sectors of the movement that are known for their dynamism responded instantaneously, calling a strike and taking to the streets in protest demonstrations. But the new elements that had appeared at the end of 1972 and developed throughout 1973 exploded onto the scene. In the cities, commercial employees participated in the strike actively and violently, thus manifesting a change in attitude among the petty bourgeoisie, which in the past had been neutralized and cut off from the workers movement. In the countryside the explosion was more violent, particularly in the Cochabamba Valley. The trade union at the Manaco shoe factory (which is owned by the Bate international trust) was just coming out of a conflict with the employers during which it had occupied the plant. When the union learned of
bolivia the decrees raising prices more than 100 percent, it called for a strike and occupied the factory again. It also took over the neighborhood, where it organized a blockade of the streets, thus cutting the road linking Cochabamba and La Paz. Banzer went to discuss the government measures with the peosants in the union of Quillocolle, the region where the factory is. The result was that the peasants of neighboring regions quickly joined the mobilizations and new barricodes went up in the Vinto, Paratani region; two bridges were dynamited and the road was completely blocked. Then the mobilization spread to the Punata region, and soon all the roads to Cochabamba were blocked. The peasantry integrated itself into the resistance, while the peasant leaders in La Paz were offering their support to Banzer -- and this just one month after the holding of the Paracaya Peasant Congress, organized by the government and chaired by Colonel Lopez. Cochabamba was transformed into the most active center of the resistance. But the masses were m. Flizing throughout the country. There were clashes in Oruro and La Paz. The peasants of the La Paz Peasant Federation also declared themselves against the government's economic measures anu, in a document against these measures, called on the workers to form a Committee to Defend the Interests of the People. The worker and peasant mobilizations in Cochabamba took on vast proportions. The dictatorship surrounded the city, declared it a military zone, and entrusted its command to General Perez Tapia. Faced with the tenacity of the workers mobilization and the danger it represented, the dictatorship panicked and hurried to mobilize it military apparatus. The air force was used to strafe peasant and worker concentrations; then tanks and armored units moved against the barricodes and roadblocks. Finally, specially trained antisubversion troops combed the region. A declaration of state of siege completed the repression, and dozens of revolutionary militonts were orrested. Bolivia was swept by these clashes and the dictatorship felt its apparatus eroding. In its fur the Catholic Church recog: nized the workers demands and also condemned the government's economic and repressive policies.
The Bolivian masses began once again to manifest their extraordinary combativity. The regime's political and socio weakness became patently obvious. But the weakness of the worker-peasant movement and the middle classes was also revealed.
More than 100,000 people were on strike; but the strikes were partial protest actions lacking centralization and coordination. There was no general strike of 100,000 warkers. Likewise, the economic demands were varied, even though they attacked all the government economic measures. There was no bloc of unified demands. The demands ranged from a monthly increase of 1, 200 Bolivian dollars to 4,000 Bolivian dollars, and there were lesser demands, too. The mobilization lacked a unified and centralized leadership. The absence of the COB (Central Obrera
Boliviana -- Bolivian Workers Federation) could not be compensated for. So the most urgent necessity is the setting up of a leodership that is up to the dynamism and combativity of the masses. This lack of centralization among the masses ollowed the government to extract itself from its bad situation. The
28 longer the masses fail to develop such leadership, the longer the regime's respite will last. Among the masses, three forces fries to unite through the strikes: the trade-union organizations of the middle class (commercial and bank employees, small commerce, efc.), which had been strengthened during last year; the workers movement in the cities and the mines; and the peasants, with their leaderships. Worker-peasant unity began with the roadblocks and barricades in the Cochabamba Valley, with the workers of the Manaco and Q imbol factories and the industrial milk factory at Pil, and with the peasant unions of Quillacollo, Vinto, Parotani, Punta, and Cliza. This alliance in action went through a test of fire during the dietatorship's air and armor attacks. The workers and peasants who died in the battle will be the cement of the future great worker-peasant alliance. INSOLUBLE POLITICAL CRISIS: THE POLITICAL RESPONSE OF THE MASSES The insoluble economic crisis and the response of the moss movement to the dictatorship's economic policy triggered serious contradictions within the Banzer government, contradictions that were expressed by cabinet shakeups and by the deterioration of the strength of the regime, the army, the FSB (Falange Socialista Boliviana -- Bolivian Socialist Falange), and the MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario -- Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) -Inside the army, Banzer ordered his competitors out, eliminating them from the political scene. The commanders in chief of the armed forces, Remberto Iriarte and Tenteno Anaya, were kicked out, as were Colonel Andres Selich, the minister of the interior who wos later assassinated in the house of his successor, and Adet Zamora. Lower-ranking officers were removed and sent to embassies as military ottaches. The old leaders were thrust aside and the commanding heights of the army passed into the hands of second-ranking officers unconditionally bound to the orders of Banzer himself. The latest clashes and the peasant explosion of Cochabamba led to the break-up of the Military High Command.
General Eladio Sanchez, commander of the armed forces, was accused of having links with subversives and was kicked out. New divisions within the army are inevitable given the regime's economic policy and the pressure of massive popular opposition. A deep crisis broke out within the FSB because of the split carried out by Carlos Valverde, the F5B's ex-secretary general and former minister of health, who revolted against his superior, Mano Gutierrez. That struggle ended in favor of the latter, who hod the support of Banzer; but at the end of 1973, during the most recent ministerial crisis, Gutierrez was replaced and sent to a post at the United Nations.
The most important crisis undoubtedly occurred within the
MR, which was divided into many factions. The cabinet rearganization of last November placed representatives of the armed forces and private companies in all the key ministries. If was for that reason that Paz Estensoro withdrew the MR from the government. In his declaration of November 28 he explained that the reasons that had led the MNR to participate in the government in the first place had disappeared. That decision precipitated o grave crisis. Paz
Estensoro and his leadership were repudiated; Franco
Guachalla, O. Bulacia, and Raul Lema, the MINR represenatives named by Banzer to secondary ministries, refused to resign, then, the leaders Ruben Julio and Ciro Humboldt limed up against Paz. Estensoro and his group; Paz Estansoro was arrested and sent into exile in Paraguay. This whole process within the government and the political groups supporting it amounts to a recomposition of the official front. Opposition personalities, as well as those who could have created conflicts among the various sectors of the government, were eliminated. They tried to homogenize the governing group. The aim was nothing other than to present a solid front in face of the mass movement that was developing. The government and the bourgeoisic, along with the army that is its party, is preparing to confront the masses. The dictatorship sees that its maneuvering room is progressively narrowing. It has been unable to dominate the movement of the mosses. The masses have reorganized and are escaping from the regime's control, despite the government's repressive measures. The dictatorship cannot stand by passively in face of the unfolding of the movement confronting it on a daily basis. But the very measures it is taking fo homogenize itself are accelerating the decomposition of the Bolivian situation. The Banzer regime is doomed! The dictatorship's weakness in face of the forces that are rapidly maturing against it led the armed forces to postpone indefinitely the general elections that Banzer had promised for June of this year. The military chiefs are simply taking account of the fact that to open an electaral period, no matter how tightly controlled, would mean giving the opposition the opportunity to break out of clandestinity and giving the mass movement the opportunity to speed up its organization. Fear of the masses, insecurity in face of their mobilization, and consciousness of the paucity of its social base -- these are the real factors that led the government to reject elections and refuse a general amnesty. THE NECESSITY FOR A REVOLUTIONARY FRONT The Bolivion left has remained on the sidelines of this process. If from the standpoint of the masses the Bolivian political process has had the weaknesses that we have indicated, it is due fundamentally to the fact that the Bolivian left has been able neither to surmount its chronic weaknesses nor to put itself back together again after the blows it has suffered through repression. If the masses do not advance further and if the dictatorship, in spite of its weakness, is able to resolve its crisis and its internal conflichs, it will be because of this insufficiency of the parties that claim adherence to the workers and revolutionary movement, parties whese situation has been made much more precarious by the Chilean coup d'etat, which has worsened the isolation of militants and leaders in exile in Chile from those working inside the countryConfronted with the violence of the repression and the difficulties of relaunching open political struggle in Bolivia, certain perfies have changed their line and their perspective instead of forming and accumulating the forces needed to overcome these difficulties. In 1972 the left was united in the FRA (Frente Revolucionario Anti-Imperialista - - Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Front) and was engaged in a struggle for the overthrow of the dictatorship and for socialism. But when it come time to apply and concretize the accords and resolutions of the FRA the front was divided and paralyzed. A sector of the movement, inspirited by the rapid new rise of the workers movement and by the semilegal functioning the dictatorship allowed the trade unions and fooled by the offer of an electoral opening, beat a retreat; it substituted a national-democratic perspective for the socialist perspective of the FRA and turned against the FRA, not in order to criticize the FRA's inactivity and to demonstrate the responsibility of the parties that were dividing and paralyzing it, but rather to criticize its clearly socialist character and the hegemony of the proletariat within it. These sectors, forgetting the reality of the Bolivian class struggle, set themselves the task of finding other allies in order to form a broad front. There have been two attempts at fomation of a brood front. The first was Lechin's, which scarcely succeeded in regrouping the two communist parties, the PRIN (Partido Revolucionario Intransigente Nacional -- Intransigent Revolutionary National party), and the MR of Giles Tuazo; that is, three organizations of the old FRA plus some sectors of the MINR, a party allied to the regime. The other attempt was that of General Torres, who sought to pull a Bolivian Peru. Like the other attempt, Torres's was not able to group together the political forces working independently of the government. The meaning of these attempts is quite clear. They flow from a different conception of Bolivian reality and of the character of the revolution and, in real life, they call into question the proletarian hegemony and leadership of the revolutionary process. From the standpoint of gathering forces together, they have in proctice remained inferior to the FRA, in which nine organizations participated. The organizations of the "Pact of Four" and of General Torres's front see the possibility of forming nationalist governments in Bolivia and proceed under the notion of revolution by stages and alliance with the bourgeoisie. Because of the fact that the bourgcoisie in Bolivia supports the dictatorship, they are left with remnants of the MINR and put their hopes in winning over a section of the army. The Bolivian situation itself throws the error of this position into sharp relief. The democratic opening, the elections, the amnesty that would allow militants to reenter the country, and so on, are clearly feeble illusions. For, in fact, the Banzer government is hardening its policy, preparing its apparatus for confronting the masses, and strengthening the army against the masses. The bourgeois sectors frightened by the rise of the mosses are continuing to line up with the regime. In its turn, Peronism quickly revealed its real rightist and reactionary character by reaching an accord with Banzer. The progressive bourgeoisie that would open up a democratic period in opposition to imperialism simply does not exist. The theses of democratic nationalism are clearly showing their limitations and their erroneous character and today lock defenders. The necessity of unifying the masses, of pressing forward the centralization of their movements and of developing a national leadership and the urgency of united action of the workers and peoples parties are what the situaRevolutionary Marxists are advocates of the united front on one condition: that the bourgeoisie does not participate and that its leadership be proletarian. This is exactly the sort of front that is now appearing in the actions of the workers and peasants who are taking on Banzer the gorilla. Revolutionary Marxists must engage themselves in ideologically crushing deviations that are involved in the two sorts of fronts that have been set up, whose conception tends to turn the masses
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bolivia away from their historic class objective and constitutes a brake on the progress of the movement. It is through this political octivity of clarification and through strengthening themselves as a leadership that the revolutionary Marxists will open the road to the triumph of the revolution. THE ARMING OF THE MASSES, BASIC OBJECTIVE FOR OVERTHROWING THE DICTATORSHIP AND INSTITUTING SOCIALISM The immediate perspective that Flows from the situation is clear. The government on the one hand and the masses on the other have entered a dynamic that is leading to confrontation. An Ovando-type salution or a democratic opening is unlikely. To be sure, the dictatorship has been weakened by losing much of the social base from which it drew support to come to power. That is why it is tolerating a certain amount of functioning by the workers organizations. We must utilize all these legal or illegal possibilities, all the while remaining conscious of their limitations in order not to fall victim to repression. Our goal is the overthrow of the dictatorship and we must take advantage of the present conditions, both in regard to the rise of the mass movement and the weaknesses of the regime, to advance this process and to open the way for the workers and peasant government. Our primary task is to prepare the masses and to prepare ourselves as a party. But preparation of the masses can on no account be propagandistic or literary in charocter. To prepare means to act, and to act means also to prepare. This means to abandon propagandism, verbalism, and general anc abstract declarations. The masses in motion are confronting the dictatorship, but they are doing it in a disunited way. Our task is to further integrate ourselves into these struggles in order to unify. generalize, and politicize the current moss struggles and to present a transitional program that leads the masses to the conquest of power. We must press for the arming of the masses, which is tied to the formation and activity of armed detachments of the party. It is the party, with its armed actions and military teams, that prepares and pushes ahead the arming of the masses -The course of events in Bolivia in the two months since the above document was written can only confirm our analysis. The explosion of the worker-peasant masses was held in check by the government mainly because of the weaknesses and deficiencies of the revolutionary leadership. But the revoludocuments 30 tionary movement, although held back by the repression, is continuing its internal development. The 100 peasants killed and the thousands wounded during the fight against the army in Cochabamba shook the whole Bolivian peasantry and stimulated its political maturation. Within the working class activity aimed at establishing a new revolutionary trade-union leadership is once again moving ahead. In the factories and mines differences have appeared within the present leaderships, or within sections of them. The Manufacturing Fedcration and the Miners Federation have been censured in assemblies for not having waged an energetic struggle in defense of the interests of the working closs. Further, the necessity for centralization and unification of all the struggies of the masses is becoming more and more clear. Discussions have begun among the rank and file aimed at determining what actions must be undertaken to make the COB rise to the present hosks. If the January events shook the worker and peasant movement, stimulating its political development, they also struck at the odministrative, political, and repressive apparatus of the military government. Differences have appeared within the army, differences that were aggravated by Banzer's visit to Brasilio and his opening of discussions with the Pinochet government. There have already been two cabinet crises since the peasant mossacre; they exposed the crisis of the dictatorship. Banzer saw the bases of his power shake and felt the effects of his lock of social base. So he resorted to a new ploy in order to drum up some support -- or so he hoped. Bolivians have a deep-rooted desire to recover the seaports that Bolivia lost during the 1879 armed aggression of English imperialism and the Chilean oligarchy. The military dictatorship decided to play on that popular sentiment. Banzer appealed to the population to unite to settle this problem. In Cochabamba in early April he assembled 200 leaders of the bourgeois parties -- ex-presidents, ex-ministers, ex-parliamentarians, directors of the private sector, and trade-union leaders. At that meeting he declared that the present international conditions favored winning a "return to the sea, " He asked those present to unite in a "holy alliance" to fight for this goal. He pledged a cabinet of national unity and asked for a social truce. It was an obvious maneuver. He asks for a social truce from the worker and peasant masses after having driven down their living standard, while the bourgeoisie continues to rake in profits. The workers are supposed to renounce their struggles in favor of the "drive to the sea. " This is the meaning of the social truce. The gorillas had failed in their attempt to crush the masses. So to gain time they resorted to a demagogic campaign. But even in this area their proposals were blocked by the political development of the workers movement. The miners union even refused to participate in the Cochabamba meeting, denounced the farce, and demanded the lifting of the state of siege and the granting of greater freedom for the functioning of the workers movement. DECLARATION OF THE POR, BOLIVIAN SECTION OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, JANUARY 31, 1974 WE SALUTE THE RISE OF THE WORKER-PEASANT ALLIANCE AND ITS FIRST BATTLES AGAINST THE MILITARY DICTATORSHIP! By violently rejecting the January 21 economic measures, the workers and peasants and the commercial and banking
employees have shaken the foundations of the military gov-