AFTER THE BOLIVIAN ELECTION
La Paz
On August 6 Gen. René Barrientos Ortuno was sworn into office as president of Bolivia, the post from which he resigned December 31, 1965. The election of July 4 was nothing more than a show, put on to legalize the military dictatorship that took power through a coup November 4, 1964.
The new Barrientos government was born in fraud and disregard of the popular will. The broad masses of the country did not take part in the July 3 election. The observers of the Organization of | American States and correspondents of the imperialist press invited to come to Bolivia have misrepresented the meaning of the election, seeking to present it as a model of freedom and democracy.
The OAS delegates, their pockets stuffed with dollars, saw only what the government wished them to see and listened only to the official version. They deliberately overlooked the brutal and bloody pre-electoral repression, the murder of trade-union and | political leaders, the massacres. Most important, they ignored the abstentionist position taken by the majority of the popular parties and trade-union organizations as a protest against the failure to provide guarantees for an honest election. To this should be added their failure to visit the working-class districts where practically no elections were staged; and their failure to visit the countryside where army sergeants or bureaucrats paid by the military junta cast the peasants' votes.
On election, day in La Paz, the workers in the poor districts staged big demonstrations and meetings led by Trotskyists at which leaders of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario [POR] spoke, including Victor Silva, Luis Liendo and Mariano Alegria. Thousands of Bolivians in the streets shouted their repudiation of the election and their refusal to recognize the fraudulent vote. Even the bourgeois press had to note these demonstrations, attacking the "PORist agitators," but the blindmen of the OAS saw only "the cleanest elections."
Despite all the propaganda, the truth is clear. The abstentionist position held by the POR and the parties composing the Democratic Council of the People [Consejo Democratico del Pueblo] carried the day July 3. The military candidate, despite the intinidation, fraud, stuffed ballot boxes in the rural towns and disregard of the popular will, was defeated. .
In the previous election in 1964, according to the report made in parliament this year by the Electoral Court, and confirmed by its chairman, the number of registered voters was 1,700,000. Due to the increase in population, the number should have risen in 1966. Yet the number of registered voters fell to 1,265,754 this year, making the appreciable difference of 434,246 as compared with 1964. This can be considered to be the number who did not register,
responding to the abstentionist campaign of the Democratic Council of the People, which includes the POR, as an indication of their lack of confidence and repudiation of the election. To this can be added other categories as indicated in the following table:
Unregistered voters 444,246
-Registered voters who did not vote 240 ,299
»/ "Blank ballots a 59,451
'. Spoiled’ ballots ce an 25,571
- Total abstention wo 729,567 |
: Total obtained. by Barrientos >: 621,776
Thus despite all the government resources at Barrientos' disposal, the Bolivian people dealt a defeat to the military dictatorship through the only means open to them.at the moment, abstention in the election. The votes cast for Barrientos represent less than thirty percent of the electorate and even much tess if the frauds. are taken into account, above all those in the countryside-although. ~ in the cities too such. things went on as military conscripts voting as many as ten times. ot
The Barrientos government that took office August 6 continues to be the same as the previous one; namely, a regime of usurpers.~ This is the basic truth about: ae July 3 elections. i
The Barrientos government, with a civilian cabinet, is the "constitutionalized" version of the military dictatorship. Consequently it is not possible to hope that it will change its basic antilabor, antinational, pro-imperialist political orientation. The real ruler of Bolivia is the U. S. embassy.
First the military junta and then Barrientos won the backing of the bourgeois political sectors. The cabinet includes the Christian Democrats, represented in the Ministry of Labor by Remo Di Natali, who was congratulated by. the Italian and Chilean Christian Democrats for his success. Collaborationist tendencies are evident among the ranks of the Falange Socialista Boliviana and . the numerous sects into which. the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolu-_ cionario split up. If these continue, the bourgeois front will be. complete.
From this it is evident that. a certain strengthening of Barrientos government is occurring. His speeches about Bolivians _ living together, his appeals for fraternity and understanding, are aimed at strengthening the bourgeois front. Barrientos is wearing his widest smile for all the bourgeois sectors and doubling his fist against the masses and the parties of the left.
After a short wait, an aggravation of the political tension between the masses and the government can be expected. The govern~ —
ment iwill-adopt: a harsher attitude toward: the left.and the labor... movement.::The -government:no longer faces various:fronts, but.only — the workers, since the:bourgeoisie has united around it. Gonse--:quently its reactionary orientation will be concentrated against the workers.
Barrientos' first cabinet reflects developments in. ‘Bolivia and indicates what the government is preparing. Chancéllor Alberto Cresto Gutiérrez of the Partido Social Democrata is.a representative of the tin barons who will carry servility to imperialism to its most abject. level. Secretary of the Treasury José Romero Loza, who headed the Treasury under Urriolagoitia, is manager of the Said plant. Minister .of Government Antonio Arguedas, who came out of the ranks of the pro-Moscow Communist party, is a rabid anti-Communist. Minister of Economy Rolando Pardi is director of IBEAS, a fanatical anti-Communist clerical investigative body of the Dominican order. For good measure he is head of the Partido Izquierda Revolucionario. Miguel Bonifaz- is in charge of planning. He.is a sub chief of the PIR and a great theoretician of the revolution by stages and the Alliance for Progress. Mendoza Nava, leader. of :the Partido Demécrata Cristiana and an ardent partisan-of free trade unionism, is in charge of labor. And. so it goes with the others -- ex-military .. figures who make the cabinet a rat nest of reactionaries.
This is the arena in which the Bolivian left and the workers movement must work out their tactics and organize for the coming — struggles, which we are sure will break into a thousand pieces the laboriously built reactionary bourgeois front.
CHILEAN