CONTINUATION OF THE STATE OF CRISIS
Bolivia
Bolivia remains in political, economic, and social crisis a crisis so profound that it seems impossible that it could continue another week without a violent solution one way or the other, but which nevertheless lurches convulsively along month after month. The economy is in chaos, inflation nearly out of control, and in entire areas of the country there exist elements of dual power that the central government has not the strength to suppress. Latent civil war broods implicitly in the confused disorder.
On July 8th the long-awaited IXth National Congress of the Miners' Union met at Colquiri. The Siles government, fearing its resolutions, which it was certain would be of a revolutionary nature, sent hundreds of troops,
"Control Político," and the thuggish MN R comandos, to besiege it. Recognizing the danger, the unarmed delegates sent messages for help up to the mine. But before it could arrive, the congress was attacked; and though the progress of the relieving miners as they worked their mountainside from the mine-mouth could be followed by the blasts of dynamite-cartridges they hurled in the air to hearten the congress, it was too late: the government forces, at their third attack, succeeded in breaking up the delegates and scattering them up over the mountainside. comandos beat any stragglers to death — the number of dead is still not known. In the town of Colquiri a reign of terror was unleashed and workers had to flee to the hills.
Following the guidance of the miners' radio at San José, the bulk of the delegates managed to reach that mine, where it was decided to continue the congress. Lechín immediately called to the miners by radio to appeal for calm, serenity, etc, and to urge the militias not to leave their own mines. But, having heard over the San José radio of the outrage at Colquiri, the men of the other mines had not waited: even as Lechín was speaking,. 30 militiamen arrived from Caracoles ; later came 70 from Pulacayo, with heavy machine-guns; then more, from Machacamarca, Morococala, etc. At the other mines the militias mobilized and awaited
The government now did not dare to attack, and the at Colquiri by Siles and Colosé. The outrage perpetrated congress reconvened at San boomeranged, for the miners had learned a bitter lesson from it, and one of the congress's first actions was to vote for the establishment of a General Staff of all the miners militias, which had theretofore each operated only on the basis of its own mine, in order to coördinate them into a militia on a national scale.
It was not long before the shaky government was engaged on the opposite front : the fascist Falange Socialista Boliviana attempted a coup d'état to overthrow it. Siles and C° managed to put it down.
Further cabinet reorganizations proved to solve nothing. The government was gnawed by the need to crush the resistance of the masses, but simply had not the forces to do so. It has kept up, through the radio and press, an all-out campaign of slander against the workers; tried to whip up a lynch spirit, particularly against the peasants of Northern Potosí and the railwaymen; risked some limited repressive actions, such as the attack on the Miners' Congress, and sending "Control Político" agents to burn down such revolutionary "nests" as the Potosí railway station and Radio Condor; demanded an end to workers' Comibol (administrative committee nationalized mines ); but nowhere has it felt strong enough to • launch an all-out on the workers and peasants those areas so wholly under their control that any government officials operate there only on sufferance.
But on the other hand the worker and peasant masses are not orgánized on a nation-wide basis or ready as yet to pass over to the offensive. Any attack by the government at any given point meets a again, and solidarity is immediately forthcoming from nearest worker and peasant centres. But there, so far, and there is a genuine danger revolutionary ardor of the masses will be frittered away partial and merely defensive actions.
government master in Bolivia. It has completely lost any popular support it ever had. Yet it manages to exist because the masses are not yet organized to topple over its weakened structure. could almost be said that the power lies in the streets but that the masses do not yet realize that they have only to reach for it and it is theirs. Better phrased, the situation and over-ripe, its objective revolutionary factors the subjective factor, a mass revolutionary party,
Working tirelessly to build such a party, the comrades of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario, Bolivian Section of the Fourth International, recently launched an appeal, form of an Open Letter, to the Lechín Fraction, Communist Party, and to the Confederations, Federations, and individual Trade Unions of Bolivia, for the formation of a United Workers' Front, to defend the gains alreadý won by the worker and peasant masses, and to prepare an Extraordinary Workers' Congress which will reorganize the COB, coördinate the now dispersed workers' and peasants' struggles on a national plane, and drive for the constitution of a workers' and peasants' government. Only the adoption of such a policy, and its determined implementation, provide a progressive way out of Bolivia's present chaotic
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