THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BOLIVIAN REVOLUTION
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL
For six years now the worker and peasant masses of Bolivia, a country of a small population, have been carrying on admirable combat to defend their revolutionary and to complete them by installing a genuine workers' govern.
These conquests are: the nationalization of the mines, the confiscation of certain lands and the beginning of forced agra. rian reform, trade unions in a united federation, the COB, and workers' and peasants' militias.
The weak native bourgeoisie, backed by American imperial. ism-which covets the country's mining and oil resources fears the contagious example that Bolivia offers to all Latin America-has not up till now succeeded in breaking unconquerable revolutionary energy and drive of the Bolivian masses. Thanks to the cowardice of the official left, led by Lechin Torres and C°, which still controls the unions and brings their support to the MNR, the party in office, the bourgeoisie has marked up serious points, which threaten the revolution's future. All the more so in that the only revolutio. nary party, the POR (section of the Fourth International) has not yet been able to give organizational form to the forces needed to guarantee the masses' victory.
Exploiting these weaknesses, the bourgeoisle has been able to transter the power from faz Estenssoro, "left" wing of the MNR, to Siles Suazo, leader of the right in his turn, trying to apply the programme of "stabilization" required by the experts of Yankee imperialism, and consequently to break the resistances the masses, has been led to lean more and more on extremeright elements like Quadros Quiroga, Ocampo, and even on fascist and proto-fascist forces.
The latest developments along these lines led the Siles government to resort to a new trial of strength with masses. It all began by a government provocation against the miners, vanguard of the resistance of the Bolivian masses, who in these last months had just openly broken (1) with the MNR and its government.
On the pretext that an armed attack had occurred on March 5th in the mining centres, Uncía and Llallagua, led by "TrotsCobist" elements, as the official press calls the de facto alliance between the POR and the revolutionary cadres of the COB unions—an intervention which supposedly ended up with the dismissal from office of the governmental authorities-Siles proceeded to a series of arrests and other reactionary measures. Their purpose was in reality to decapitate the organizations the miners and of the workers of the La Paz factories of their revolutionary elements and to replace them by the government's
"reconstructors" of the trade-union movement.
Among the men arrested were : the miners' leader, Sinofrio Cabrera; the secretary-general of the POR, Comrade Gonzalez Moscoso ; Comrade Victor Villegas, member of the POR's Political Bureau; some leaders of the Bolivian CP, and Comrade Guillermo Lora, publisher of the organ Masas. The order was furthermore given to extend the arrests to a whole series of miners' leaders of Catavi and Siglo XX, to reorganize the mines, and to liquidate the workers' representatives.
Without waiting for the centrist leaders of the Miners' Federation and of the COB to take action, the masses of article by H Lucero in the January 1958 Internationale.
9 miners immediately reacted by launching a strike and by taking over complete control in reality of all the mining centres.
Lechín and Torres were in favor of a staggered strike, each mine striking for one day with the goal of obtaining the freedom of the trade-union leaders and defending already won
Notwithstanding, the masses soon went beyond these instructions, making general an unlimited strike in all the mining centres, disarming the military forces sent by the government or shutting them up in their barracks under the guard of their own militias. In certain places, hunger strikes, with the participation of miners' wives, were launched.
The Catavi and San José radio stations in the miners' hands broadcast continuously, urging on the miners' struggle and calling on the workers of La Paz and other urban centres to join them. It is in this way that it was possible to set up a practical alliance between the miners and the factory-workers and the railwaymen of La Paz and Oruro.
The aggressive fighting spirit of the miners was such that Siles was once more forced to slow down his offensive, to free the arrested union leaders, and to temporize about his anti-union
For all that, the trial of strength is not over. Siles is obliged to try to split the trade-union movement and to break up what the press calls the "Trots-Cob conspiracy," ie, the fusion that is being carried out between the POR and the revolutionary elements of the working class.
The role of the POR in these events was very important, its militants being at the heart of the combats and of the most initiatives of the masses. slogan of a general strike of the whole proletariat of the country, led by a united-front committee, and the mobilization of the and peasants' militias in defense of the masses' It furthermore proposed the creation of a revolutionary front of the trade unions and of all the workers' parties so as to fight for the calling of a special congress of the COB, in which there should be discussed settled all questions, including that of a workers' government.
We must follow with attention the next developments in Bolivia. The duality of power which has been existing latent form since April 1952 has in this last time taken on a more accentuated open form, for the mining centres the country are in reality under almost exclusively workers' control, and their organizations have reached a de facto rupture with the Siles government.
The revolutionary front of the trade unions, the POR, and the itself established and in convoking the special congress of the COB in that part of the country where the workers have de facto control.
It would thus be easier to find out what must be the effective riposte on the governmental plane to the continual provocations of a government more and more cut off and isolated from the furthermore, plain that it is necessary division, in the organization and in the struggle, between the miners, and the factory-workers and railwaymen, as well as between the proletariat as a whole and the peasants. It is on such divisions that the reaction is currently speculating in order to push its offensive.
But the best answer to these plans, the best stimulant for a genuine unity of the masses, is at present a resolute action for a workers' and peasants'