The Partido Obrero Revolucionario [Revolutionary Workers party] declares that the rise of General Barrientos and the Armed Forces to power: constituted a preventive coup d'état supported by North American imperialism and aimed at containing and canalizing: the, most important revolutionary, democratic movement of the. proletariat, the democratic petty. bourgeoisie of the cities and important sectors of the peasantry. .
This‘ means that the fundamental cause of the military coup d'état and the downfall of Paz Estenssoro was the rising development of.a revolutionary process, with growing mobilization of the masses, initiated in the recent period by the teachers! strike, followed by the militant actions of the students, and capped by the action of the miners, and important layers of factory workers and peasants near the mining centers.
This mobilization of the masses against the Paz Estenssoro. government,. scarcely two months after the beginning of ‘his third . term as president, had the effect of shaking the foundations of. the capitalist regime and placing in grave danger the control of the state by the bourgeoisie and imperialism. The workers and students, through militant action, even succeeded in undermining the morale of the soldiers as was seen in the battle of Sora-Sora, where after some. bloody encounters with the miners of Siglo Veinte and Catavi, they fled.in disorder, abandoning their arms, wounded, and some prisoners they had taken, a
The firmess and decisiveness of the mine prolétariat, mobilized on a national scale, placed the ruling class up against two facts: the irrepressible extension of the struggle of the ~ masses and the disintegration of the morale of the soldiers, It. was clear,that the repressive forces of the carabineros, mercenaries and army were incapable of containing the masses, The military chiefs, fearful of being dragged down in the imminent defeat of the Paz Estenssoro government and foreseeing how extensive its: downfall would be in face of the sweeping mobilization of the masses, decided with common accord and the intervention of the North American. ‘embas~ sy, to hand the power to a Military Junta.
In this way, the events of November 3 and 4, which resulted in a new government as an immediate consequence, had a contradictory content and significance. On the one hand the masses triumphed by defeating their main enemy, the oppressive bureaucratic regime of Paz Estenssoro. But on the other hand: the masses were cheated with the appearance of the Military Junta;,.‘which took over the Govern= " ment Palace, usurping the victory of. the people, : (2) The Class Wature of the Military Junta
The military coup d'état was not directed against Paz Estenssoro, but against the mobilization of the people and the workers. Paz Estenssoro left with everything arranged; he named his successors and charged them with continuing, under new forms, the counterrevolutionary-course of his government.
The Military Junta is, thus, a reactionary attempt to smash > the perspective opened in Bolivia by the struggle of the massas, ~ The declarations of the military ministers leave no room for doubt about this, This is still truer of their practical measures such as the so-called "Operation Disarming," which will be followed by "Operation De-nationalization," “Operation Restoration of the Land" against the peasants, and "Operation Military Penal Code" against the armed pickets of the mines, From this it follows that the Military Junta is the continuator of the previous regime, but with the accent on its rightist course and with the co-operation of the old. oligarchs and ‘the Falangist leadership. 3
In general, the Military Junta, the expression of the preventive coup d'état, has succeeded in several areas -~ momentarily containing the masses, saving the apparatus set up by the MNR [Movimi-~ ento Nacionalista Revolucionario|, and guaranteeing the continuation of the capitalist regime. an
The workers and their vanguard are duty bound to unmask the Military Junta and denounce all its measures; discussions must be opened among the union ranks and workers on the danger which the new government represents for the social, economic and political conquests: of, the masses. None of the workers must forget for a single moment that the Military Junta is the continuation of the
Paz Estenssoro regime, allied today with the former aristocratic "rosca" of the ex-landlords and ex-mine owners. (5) How the: uilitery, Snatched the Victory Away from the Masses
“For | the revolutionary vanguard and the workers, however, it. is ‘not: sufficient to know that a mass struggle defeated the Paz Estenssoro government and that the Military Junta has a reactionary nature, It is indispensable in addition to determine and to understand the causes that made possible the rise of the military to: power in face.of a militant and revolutionary mobilization of important sectors of the masses, Why, under such conditions, was the - Paz Estenssoro government brought down by the right and not by the left? The answer to this is the key to fixing responsibilities and assimilating experiences of use in the coming struggles.
These causes, which the. revolutionary vanguard must think over deeply, are summarized by the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario] as: follows:
(a) The absence of a leadership to centralize the struggles, mobilizations and energies of the masses, to direct them toward precise objectives in a unified way going beyond a mere confrontation with the Paz Estenssoro government and which would correctly pose the problem of power. Lacking such a center, the teachers, miners, | students and workers in general fought valiantly but without:a _ general staff to plan and orient the actions so as to knit them. together. In the absence of the strategic objective of taking .. power, all the various sectors moved singly in the attack on Paz- Estenssoro and his government: without a clear idea of what would - follow his downfall, Thus the characteristic feature of all the mobilizations was spontaneity. They were fed by the initiative arising from below, derived from the enormous force and dynamism of the masses. The trade-union leaders, educated by the MNR in the politics of holding back and compromising, were dislodged and bowled over, The political parties of the left, with the sole exception of the POR, demonstrated their-incapacity to rise to the level of the events, displaying their limitations in understanding the masses, expressing their sentiments and placing themselves at their head. - Instead, they acted as obstacles and diversionary factors, occupied as. they were with discussing old problems already solved by history.
(b) The role of brake played by the workers! leadership, which prevented the massive mobilization of the proletariat in the plants.. Only the most politically enlightened sectors, under the guidance.of the POR, like the workers at Said, overcame this brake and. -joined valiantly and actively in the street battles. This fact and the..self-liquidation of the COB [Central Obrera Boliviana] as a national leadership of the masses, determined that in La Paz the practical axis of the mobilizations tilted toward the university students and not toward the proletariat, The university. students
with their Falangist outlook, forced Paz Estenssoro to flee; they . formed an alliance with the military, playing the role of police to contain the workers, The national and departmental trade-union leadership must. be called to account by the ranks. Of course, no other conduct could be expected from leaders educated in bourgeois concepts, who have always compromised, with one foot in the opposition and the other in the MNR. To free the immense energy of the workers a different leadership is required.
‘(c) 'Passivity ‘of the bulk of the peasantry. The big peasant force remained at the margin of the struggles. The fighters in the cities could not even pose going to the. peasantry and only the min~ ers were able to mobilize nearby areas. The government, likewise, could not mobilize the bulk of the peasantry on its side, only isolated groups quite close to the bureaucracy of the MNR, as in Sucre and Cochabamba. The power of the peasantry in a semicolonial country is decisive in tipping the political balance and this was forgotten by the trade-union leaders of the labor movement. In the next round this torrential force can be united to the revolutionary perspective if this lesson is grasped and advantage is taken of the rightist course of the Military Junta which is encouraging the former iatifundistas [big land holders] to ‘set out to reconquer their land,
(a). Finally one more factor must be added, consisting in the conservative force of the army which was not put:'to the test in the encounters with the masses. Moving rapidly after what was revealed at Sora Sora, the high command based itself on this force, giving the appearance of turning against Paz Estenssoro, thus controlling © the cities, preventing new.mobilizations of the masses, The rode of the university students, who allied themselves with the military for the moment, coupled with the lack of a centralized leadership, as we have indicated, left the principal cities of the country in: the hands of the military.
These causes which explain the rise of ‘the military to power, permitting the right and not the left to resolve the struggle against. Paz Estenssoro was not predetermined, of course ; it should © and: could have been modified, The POR worked energetically to fillin the breaches and weak points of the process, If, despite its efforts, tne workers could not advance further, this was due to the. compromising, defeatist tendencies that still exist in the trade- ~' union and political leadership of the workerst movement,
(4) Responsibility of the Political Parties
Responsibility for the Military Junta'ts usurpation of the victory of the masses falls, in the final analysis, on the political parties, Similarly, ‘the rightist course adopted | by the military, and its alliance with the old rosca, are nothing more than conse-_ quences of the way the parties in the opposition conducted themselves. Only the POR. can be excepted. The POR struggled tenaciously: to open a road different from that of: the Military Junta in face of the ©
myopia of the other so-called left political formations.
It should be noted that in the: problem of responsibility we refer:to the so-called left, since the parties of the extreme right played the role they should. have undertaken. The perspective of the FSB [Falange Socialista Boliviana], the PRA [Partido Revolucionario Autentico], the Christian Democrats, liberals and Hertzoguist republicans was always that the military dictatorship should restore the old feudal-bourgeois privileges and smash what they called worker-. peasant barbarism. The last~hour dissidents: of the MNR like Siles | Suazo and the Bloque de Defensa joined this camp. From the guerrillas in the periphery of the Falange to the paid formations of the MNR and the heads of the army the decision was.to get the military into power, We cannot blame those who act according to their ideology and the conservative and reactionary interests they serve. .
The responsibility must be fixed among those who call themselves leftists, representatives of the working class, of the peas~ antry and poor sectors of the middle class, who contributed to the triumph of the military and who are consequently to blame for the present. reactionary measures of the Junta.
The workers must blame and hold responsible in the victory of the military the PRIN [Partido Revolucionario de Izquierda Nacionalista],. the. PCB [Partido Communista Boliviano], and the trade-union léaderships of the. COB and the national confederations. These parties prevented in practice the formation of a powerful. front of the left, and tied up the trade-union leaderships in activities that were guided completely by the right. The main leaders of- the PRIN and the PCB preferred to constitute the tail of the rightist front rather than join with the Trotskyists in forming the head of a great front of the workers and the people.
The POR fought stubbornly for constitution of a Left Front, arguing with the workers! leaders, exerting pressure among the ranks of the PRIN and the PCB. After great efforts, the POR succeeded in getting the idea of this front accepted, documents were written, | plans were made for armed action to defeat Paz Estenssoro, but the top leadership of these parties prevented this from becoming concretized. The POR called for discussion on the question of power after the downfall of Paz Estenssoro and, warning about the danger of a new July 21, demanded. the unification.of the whole revolutionary and workers! left. The top leadership.of the PRIN did not oppose a Single proposal, but paralyzed any action in this direction while it continued its pacts and deals with the right. The tradeunion leaders belonging to the PRIN, more sensitive. to the feelings ‘of the ranks,. better oriented, approved the proposals of the POR, but could not loosen the grip of the leadership.
The ‘Leaderships of the PRIN..and the PCB remained prisoner to ‘their democratic-bourgeois political concepts.. They are not Marx- ' ist. revolutionaries, They cannot see beyond their own noses. They
saw only the struggle against Paz Estenssoro,.and to fight him they allied themselves with the ultrarightists, granting them even a leadership role, but they were incapable of working ‘ out a strategy to follow up the defeat of Paz Estenssoro,.
In this way the downfall of Paz Estenssoro was brought about by the heroic action of the workers, while these so-called left parties stood empty-handed and empty-headed, not knowing what to do; and, in face of the Military Junta, they again remained in the wake of the right.
The revolutionary masses, without the Left Front which these parties blocked, were cheated out of their victory over Paz Estenssoro. The Military Junta was established on their heroism and bravery.
(5) The Stability of the. Junta and the Role of the Military
The POR had long maintained that the army would be the card.. played by imperialism, This was the way it turned out. With the’ MNR and its chieftain Paz Estenssoro worn out, isolated, their prestige gone, imperialism needed a replacement to control the country. The bourgeois parties, in constant crises and torn by contradictions, could offer imperialism. no guarantees, Thus the army, ideologically armed and prepared, became the key piece which the North. American embassy put into. play.
Nevertheless, the Military Junta is far from having solved . the problems facing imperialism and the capitalist regime in main- | taining their rule in Bolivia. Its stability is limited and precarious. In Bolivia no government can become stabilized unless it meets the aspirations and needs of the masses and at the same time promotes economic development. Paz Estenssoro and the MNR fell precisely. because they were unable to do this. The Military Junta is even less able to solve these problems, since its alliance with. the old rosca narrows the margin for maneuver,
The illusions created by the Junta are already beginning to vanish, Those who-hoped that General Barrientos might be a new Busch or Villarroel are due for bitter disillusionment. In their time, Busch!s measures, compelling the former mining companies to give up one hundred per cent of their profits, and those of Villar-~ roel, who organized the peasants and ended feudal servitude by the decrees of May 5, 1945, were highly progressive. In the present period, the bourgeois revolution ended in the failure of the MNR; there are now no measures of this kind to be carried out. After the bankruptcy of the bourgeois program, only socialist tasks remain. General Barrientos cannot undertake this type of revolution, tied-as he is to imperialism and prisoner as he is to the most ultrarightist forces. The socialist revolution is the heritage of the proletariat, allied with the peasantry and the poor middis o7888 and its vanguard the POR.
_The Military Junta cannot find any way to meet the needs of the masses today, nor can it open a road for the profound transformations required to do. so tomorrow. Thus its stay in power will prove to be quite transitory and no more than a prelude to.the great struggles that will decide the fate of Bolivia.
The military power will be all the more transitory inasmuch as the Bolivian army has no solidity like the Argentine or Brazilian armies, for example. Already in its short time as a government, the army has suffered the impact of the spcial question. The apparent monolithism has already cracked. Different and opposing factions are forming. The army will divide into wings, those who want to maintain Barrientos for a long time and others who want to get rid of him.
As in the case of Paz Estenssoro, the masses will soon cast him out. The moves toward disarming.the masses, toward taking back the land, rejecting wage increases, etc., etc., are rapidly dissipating some of the hopes with which the Junta was greeted. This process will accelerate the decomposition in the army ranks,
The present period is consequently one of lull, a momentary truce, in which the two camps, imperialism and its lackeys on the one hand, and the working class:and:the nation-wide majority on the other are preparing their arms for the next combat. (6) The Bourgeois Alternatives to the Situation
In face of the instability of the Military Junta and the decomposition of the army, the.parties of the ultraright, the center right and the so-called reformists are rushing to pose their alter-— natives and perspectives. It -is:necessary to unmask them before the masses. All of them are adding-.up their hopes in terms of elections of the traditional kind and are: pressing the Junta to set them early.
We see the parties putting-on a servile show with regard to the Military Junta. Grouped in the Comité Revolucionario del Pueblo [People's Revolutionary Committee] they are seeking to curry favor with the military and to offer their services to the various wings.
There has been a verbal and journalistic renascence of old parties emptied and buried by history. The sectors of the MNR are desperately trying to unite. But politically they advance abso- © lutely nothing that is new. The old parties want to turn the wheel of history backward; and, as ex~President Urriolagoftia puts it, "regain their lands and properties." The wings of the MNR ~- the PRA, Siles, PRIN, to which the PIR [Partido Izquierdista Revolucionario] must be added -- are again playing with the thesis of the national, bourgeois-democratic revolution; that is, a repetition of the. politics,. program and plans of the MNR. These groups want to begin all over again. For them nothing happened in the twelve years of MNR government. The PRIN and the PIR did not learn anything des-
pite the fact that events completely flattened their theories. To blame for the rise of the military, they are now rushing to legalize handing over the power to the old oligarchical aristocracy through elections. You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Thus all these tendencies have a common denominator -- submission to imperialism and fear of the masses and revolutionary roads. Not a single one poses a radical transformation of..the basic economic structures of the country or a radical solution of the problems of national independence. In the best of cases, as with the — PRIN and the PIR, they appear as the prodongation of the plans. and. policies of Paz Estenssoro under the shadow of imperialism. =.
All these alternatives, advocating different roads, only point to defeat for the workers, to increasing the colonial condition of Bolivia, to undoing all the social conquests, and to perpetuating Bolivian backwardness, These perspectives have already been tested and have proved their. worthlessness ; that is why they have. been rejected by the masses, (7) The ‘Situation in the Workers! Movement
The. Bolivian workers know that the downfall of Paz Estenssoro was their triumph. The usurpation of this victory by the Military Junta has not lessened this feeling of triumph and the consciousness of their strength.
If at first, in some sectors, hope was aroused in the new government, this quickly disappeared, giving way to lack of confidence and a critical attitude. By no means has the combative spirit of. the workers been dampened. Everybody reacted quickly to the Junta, placing before it the petitions which the previous government had refused to hear. Then when the effort to disarm the masses made .things clear, flat opposition appeared, The mine proletariat was the first to come out with the slogan, "Down with the Military Boot!" This was the cry with which they greeted Barrientos at Catavi and Siglo XX. The proletariat in the plants followed the same line, aithough more slowly.
The situation with the peasantry, initially confused, is becoming defined-as opposition to'the Junta, particularly under the stimulation of the activities of ‘the old rosca and former latifundistas who have launched a campaign to regain the land: from the peasants,
The urban petty bourgeoisie, which is at present savoring the pleasures of liberty and wide democracy, since the repressive — instruments of the previous government were destroyed, is the layer that to a certain extent retains illusions in the Junta. But budding conflicts are already evident; the teachers are again mobilizing behind the petitions rejected by Paz Estenssoro. In addition, the massive lay-offs of public employees adds still another factor
to perturb the middle class,
Consequently, the working class as well as the peasantry, spurred by their problems, are moving toward crystalization of an alliance. The revolutionary vanguard must lift this developing tendency to the political level and concretize it in a genuine workerspeasants front that could immediately win over the dissatisfied petty bourgeoisie.
The looming | struggles and the tasks imposed from now on require the immediate ouster of all the defeatist elements from the trade-union leadership -- those linked. with the MNR and the bourgeois tendencies. What is needed today is a trade-union leadership with a proletarian, socialist outlook. Halfway measures and petty-bourgeois deals must be ended. It is necessary to turn to the revolutionary, proletarian school of sacrifice and unyielding struggle against the class enemy. The trade-union leadership must stand in the camp of the revolution and not in the camp of reaction. The polarization of forces, the disintegration and crisis of the ruling regime no longer permits any half tones. This is what the revolutionary Marxists must work for, in order to bring forward a genuine trade-union leadership up to the level of the tasks, (8) The Revolutionary Alternative and the
Partido Obrero Revoluctonarie
The situation in the movement of the workers, peasants and middle class, rapidly evolving toward-a confrontation with the Military Junta, greatly lessens the possibility for imperialism and the Bolivian ruling class to cut:short the Bolivian revolutionary process initiated during Paz Estenss6ro's regime. It is certain, as we have said, that the Military. Junta was the product. of a preventive coup ad! Stat aimed at containing the advance of the masses. But it is also true that this objective cannot be achieved as projected since the masses have not been mentally disarmed. After mom entary confusion, they are now tending to continue their march. To the masses, the workers, peasants and pauperized sectors of the people, it. is evident that the Military Junta is not the government they seek; it does. not correspond to their aspirations nor satisfy: their needs,
It is on the basis of this situation among the masses that the POR raises nigh the banner of Strugete for a popular workers! power, r
Against the false alternative offered by the center-right and reformist leaderships of choosing between a Paz Estenssoro— type dictatorship and bourgeois democracy, the POR states that the only road, or. the concrete real road to get out of the chaos’, the misery and the colonial condition is to struggle for socialism. The alternative is to continue under imperialist domination, supporting terror and hunger, or to construct a new society of liberty
and progress,
It is necessary to repeat -- for those suffering from illusions -- that with the downfall of Paz Estenssoro not only was a -party, the MNR, broken, but»a-whole concept and program, there no’ ‘longer being any possibility of advancing within the bourgeoisdemocratic framework, As against the utopias and the illusions of the petty bourgeoisie, the only thing that is effective, real and concrete is a workers and peasants government as a form of government representing the broad masses of the country. Poe This road, the only one that leads to national and social liberation, requires strengthening the Partido Obrero Revolucionario,. the only. party that has not faltered in its line,’ which for years has advanced a correct orientation for the masses. Because of this, the workers who have tried the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois: parties and have been: cheated and betrayed, have a post of struggle, awaiting for them.in the ranks of the POR. By strengthening. the POR, the workers will assure their own victory and the defeat. of imperialism and: the. national exploiters.
The struggle. for workers! power and socialism is occurring © on a world scale. In Bolivia the stage of the national, bourgeoisdemocratic revolution came to an end with the MNR, as it. did previously in Argentina with the downfall of Perén. The defeat of. the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois leaderships does not mean a setback for: the masses but only a struggle to place proletarian-socialist currents again in deadership of the mass movement, (8) . Immediate Tasks: of the Revolutionary Vanguard
~ In preparing the next struggles on ‘the revolutionary: road that has been indicated, the Marxist vanguard , ‘the POR, proposes the following immediate “tasks:
_ (1) -No worker or ‘peasant must give up his arms, On the contrary, the trade unions must centralize the armaments by organizing a Proletarian Army, and must provide education and training in military tactics. No armed worker must stay outside of the Workers! Army! This is the best way to defend your arms.
{2:) The workers must oust from their organizations the rem nants of-the MNR bureaucrats who are now trying to hide under the mantle of Barrientism. New leaderships must come forward expressing the militancy of the cadres who participated in the struggle against the capitalist dictatorship of Paz: Estenssoro.
(3) Armed and- open defense of the -land conquered by the peasants. Reorganization of the Peasant Regiments in order to guarantee the land, to oppose land taxes in the countryside and the abuses of the old landholders .
25m
(4) The people of Bolivia as a whole, while jealously de- = fending the democratic liberties gained at the cost of their blood, must demand and widen the main liberty of the Bolivians: THEIR LIBERTY AS A NATION, Along this road it is necessary to struggle to repudiate all the colonial pacts signed by previous governments with the U.S. and the big imperialist companies. It is necessary to struggle for the nationalization of the still remaining Yankee monopolies, for repudiating the treaty of Rfo de Janeiro and the’ bilateral pacts, It is necessary to oppose Bolivia's participation in military maneuvers with the butcher armies of Latin America as’ well as to demand the re-establishment of relations with workers: and peasants Cuba and with Czechoslovakia.
(5) Struggle for a general increase in wages with joint mobilization of all the workers.
(6) To centralize all these tasks and overcome. the lack of. a centralized leadership of the masses, which was the main element explaining the rise to power of the Military Junta, the Partido — Obrero Revolucionario calls on the revolutionary workers parties-: of the left, on the workers, peasants and student. organizations, to form a united workers! and people's front in order to offer the country a revolutionary socialist alternative against the various bourgeois and reformist positions.
La Paz, November 1964.
For the Executive Committee of the POR: Hugo Gonzfles Moscoso (general secretary), Eulogio Sdnchez, Gabriel Guzmdn I., Alex Alcén, F,Mirabal, W. Aldana, ‘Elfo Vasquez, David Espada, V.Silva, Felipe Vasquez.
STATEMENT ON WANDSWORTH