UNDER THE MILITARY JUNTA IN BOLIVIA
La Paz
JULY 16 == After the defeat of the strike and the army's occupation of the mines [see World Outlook June 11], the dominant mood in official circles, among the bourgeoisie and the upper middle class was that the government had dealt the workers a long-term defeat, They thought the time had come to reorganize the labor movement. They issued a decree liquidating the COB [Central Obrera Boliviana] and all the leaderships of the unions and the union federations, Another decree scheduled new trade-union elections in which no one could run for office who had previously been a leader, or who was a member of an "extremist" political party. The elections were to be conducted under a military chief and the list of candidates had to be approved by the ministry of labor, ,
The masses reacted instinctively against the military junta's intervention in trade-union affairs, This took two forms. Generally they did not respond to the call for new elections, running no candidates, This happened in the main working-class centers, The bourgeois press and the government branded it "indiferentismo" ["indifferencism']. In other centers revolutionists were put on the slates, This happened at the Said factory, one of the biggest in the country. The government refused to recognize the victors in these elections, .
All this led to organizing trade-union defense committees, in repudiation of the government decrees,
The military junta, particularly Barrientos, stated publicly that it would not deal with the old leaders, but only with rankeand~ file workers, In the factories and mines, rank-and-file commissions were accordingly set up. They presented Barrientos with bitter criticisms of all his acts. When these commissions were arrested, others stepped forward to advance the same positions.
The hatred of the working masses for the military junta is deep; their fighting spirit is growing, their radicalization proceeding. The troops sent to the plants and mines do not feel secure.
In the mines the response to the wage cuts decreed by the junta to lower costs proved less than successful. In Catavi production dropped to a level never before registered. Then, a week ago, the miners at Siglo XX came out of the mine shafts to stage a demonstration against the military junta. Breaking through the lines of armed soldiers, they went to the union headquarters where they held a meeting and elected a trade-union defense committee,
The army did not dare repress this demonstration, although some scattered shots resulted in killing a mother in a miner's family.
The government and the bourgeois press accused the Trotskyists of the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario] of being behind this. They also allege that members of the trade-union defense committee at Siglo XX belong to the POR. In addition they have been publish-= ing sensationalistic items about members of the POR starting up guerrilla warfare. According to these accounts, leaders of the POR disguise themselvés as peasants in traveling between the miners! encampments,.
Recently they began running stories about Trotskyist guerrilla fighters crossing into the country from Argentina,
The efforts at unifying the two existing Trotskyist tendencies has been duly noted in the press. To read the papers, Trotskyism is moving to the head of the labor and revolutionary opposition to the military junta. In fact the atmosphere is such that every= thing of an oppositional political character is increasingly ascribed to "Trotskyism,"
The rightist parties are adulating the military junta in the’ | most bare~faced way. The Falange Socialista Boliviana, the Partido’ ~ Revolucionario Auténtico, the Partido Liberal, the Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, constitute a servile chorus, publicly approving the repressive measures of the government, yet claiming that there is no military dictatorship in Bolivia.
The MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario] has split into four factions. One is headed by a doctor of medicine, Guillermo Jalregui, who calls himself a left Pasestenssorista [follower of the former President Paz Estenssoro]. Another is headed by Victor Andrade, former ambassador to the U.S., a friend of the Yankees and of General Ovando Candia, co-president of the military junta. Still another is headed by Siles Zuaso, and the fourth by J. Alderete, former ambassador to Czechoslovakia, who lists himself as a Marxist,
A struggle is raging in the MNR over the leadership. The Andrade sector is fighting for control in order to bring the party into collaboration with the military junta. Recently some of Andrade's opponents were arrested, reportedly to help him seize leadership of the party. The government alleges that the MNR is plotting, but it has arrested only middle-rank cadres and a sector of the top leadership.
A struggle is going on within the Partido Revolucionario de la Izquierda Nacionalista [PRIN -+ the party organized by labor leader Juan Lechfn after breaking with Paz Estenssoro and the MNR] that could end in a split. The balance lies with the hundreds of cadres in exile in Paraguay and Argentina. This situation is of particular importance in the Bolivian political scene because the PRIN represents the final obstacle for the masses to overcome in freeing themselves from national democratic conceptions and passing over to a radical position,
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As for the Trotskyist movement, it is undergoing heavy repression at the moment. Some thirty of its leaders in Catavi, Siglo XX and Huanuni are in prison accused of "terrorist" acts and: "guerrilla activity." In addition, dozens of others have been fired in the mines, thrown out of jobs elsewhere and are in difficult circumstances in the countryside and the cities, The top leadership of the Trotskyist movement is in the underground,
The two parties, both bearing the same name of Partido Obrera Revolucionario, in which the Trotskyist movement is divided are discussing unification, a development that has already been reflected in the press in the form of fear of greatly strengthened Trotskyist forces in Bolivia.
The peasantry, by and large, is against the military junta. The rural towns occupied by the army have been converted into centers of abuse, violence and exactions against the peasants, Talk is widespread in the countryside that the junta intends to bring back compulsory labor on the highways and on the holdings of the big landlords; and that any opposition will be met with military repression,
The military junta has sought to buy off the peasant tradeunion bureaucracy by conceding farms to them. But the demand of imperialism and the bourgeoisie to disarm the countryside has begun to create friction between sectors of the bureaucracy and the army. The first fights broke out in Cochabamba where patrols of soldiers were attacked and disarmed. Thus the artificial alliance between the peasant bureaucracy and the military junta is not likely to be of tong duration, - The military junta cannot leave the peasantry armed. The inevitable attempt to disarm it will end in a bloody struggle which will reactivate the alliance between the workers and peasants ona much higher and more active level than in the past. The political tendencies now spreading into the countryside are the PRIN, the POR and to a lesser degree the PCB [Bolivian Communist party]. The latter party, it.should be noted, underwent a split and is at a low ebb in the cities. Some sectors of the old bureaucracy still follow the MNR
The Barrientos-Ovando government is seated on a powder keg. The broad masses are against it; its social base is very narrow, This situation is reflected within the army. The fissures barely visible there today will deepen in the future. The Barrientos- Ovando squabble, which was momentarily papered over by sharing power as co=presidents, will flare again into the open in the near future.
Consequently the military junta has.its real base in an army bristling with weapons. But this army is not solid. To strengthen it, the reserves of 1963-64 were called up. But this led to opposite results than those counted on. The reserves proved to be undisciplined and had to be retired. The air force then became the main
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criminal support of the regime.
To counter the resistance in the mines, and the demonstrations and mobilizations, the government recently held a congress of pre= ' fects, mayors and chiefs of military garrisons of the departments and provinces to plan control of the population against possible terrorist acts and guerrilla activity. This was done under the direct guidance of Yankee technicians,
In the military circles, the young officers discuss the conditions under which the North American marines would intervene in case of danger to the junta. These discussions generally end in fights among those who favor Yankee intervention and those who oppose it. MInsubordination has occurred in the Colegio Militar and the Politécnico de Aviacién. Behind the disciplinary questions stand political causes that take this confused form for the time being.