PROVOKES BATTLE WITH BOLIVIAN MINERS
The bourgeois Paz Estenssoro regime provoked a new test of strength with the Bolivian working class when it announced that it had arrested two leaders of: the union at the famous Siglo Veinte tin mine on charges of alleged "murder" and "misuse" of union funds growing out of resistance of the miners to further encroachments on their hard-won rights. _ , When the news was learned at the Siglo Veinte mine, the men retaliated December 6 by seizing nineteen hostages, among them four U.S. technicians, They stationed armed militia in the streets to bar any movement of troops toward the mine. In La Paz, December 12, workers and students staged a huge solidarity demonstration with the miners.
[The two union leaders who were arrested by the government, Federico Escobar and Irineo Pimentel, were singled out for victimization by the government in a crackdown ah Siglo Veinte last August. See World Outlook October 4,]
The government followed up the provocation of arresting the two mine union leaders by the even bigger provocation of issuing a decree dissolving
the Bolivian trade-union federation, the COB [central Obrera Boliviana]. -
With that action, the Paz Estenssoro regime clearly disclosed its aim of completing the dismantling of the main conquests of the 1952 Bolivian. revolution,
In the beginning Paz Estenssoro attempted to occupy a "center" position between the right wing of the MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario] and the so-called “left wing" led by Vice-President Juan Lechin, Under the inspiration of the U.S.State Department, however, Paz Estenssoro shifted his policy farther and farther to the right and at the same time quite consciously toward a showdown with the miners,
As the New York Herald Tribune expressed it editorially December 13, "any serious attempt to bring order out of chaos in Bolivia would touch ~ off an explosion between the government. . . and the leftist tin miners. - - « . The attempt, under the prodding and with the assistance of Washing~ ton was made,"
The vehicle of "the attempt" was a "consolidation" and "rehabilitation" scheme called the "triangular plan." This involved U.S. and West German imperialism and the Bolivian bourgeoisie, It was to be applied by COMIBOL [Corporacién Minera de Bolivia, which is in charge of the nation-. alized mining industry]. .
The scheme in fact signified that the workers were to pay the costs .— of "rehabilitating" the mines. This involved suppression of workers con-_ trol, mass dismissals, the scaling down of social services, etc. It was a government move in applying such measures on sharp scale that led to a strike in the Siglo Veinte mine which then mushroomed into a general mine’ strike last summer, os
The Paz Estenssoro government is now trying to break up the miners! | armed militia and their trade unions, two most important conquests of the-: 1952 revolution, ,
It is trying to split the peasants away from the workers by calling on the peasants! militia to join with army troops against the miners! militia.
The current situation, however, involves many dangers for the Paz Estenssoro leadership of the MNR. lLechfn has already threatened to run for president of the republic against Paz Estenssoro in next yearts election, This would split the MNR vote down the middle.
If Paz Estenssoro presses on to an explosive. showdown, the working class, headed by Boliviats 200,000 militant miners, could very well by-pass the wavering and basically conciliatory Lechfin leadership, A strengthening.of the elements of dual power, which still exist in Bolivia, would then constitute a mortal threat to the survival of the capitalist regime in this country high in the Andes.
In face of such a possibility, it is not excluded that the government will. draw back at. the last moment.
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. + Paz Estenssoro has delayed for years in carrying his differences with the. miners to an open break, He turned against the right wing of the MNR precisely in order to avoid a showdown. Now four years later he finds himself again at the crossroads. oo
In: ‘any case the hold of the center: wing of the MNR on the working class has ‘been greatly loosened by Paz Estenssorots actions and this opens up a new political situation in Bolivia. Only Lechfn now stands between the mass of class-conscious Bolivian workers: and the revolutionary Marxists represented by the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario], the Bolivian section of the Fourth International. re
Paz Estenssoro has openly sought . arms and other forms of military aid from American imperialism in order the better to put the ‘rebellious miners" down.
Socialists everywhere should call for "Hands off the Bolivian Revolution}" and cempaign for the international labor movement and the workers! states to come to the assistance of the threatened Bolivian revolution,
SETBACK FOR THE LEFT IN VENEZUELA
The refusal of the masses in