### I.
1. The MNR regime, established following the victorious insurrection in April 1952, collapsed in November 1964 with the fall of Paz Estenssoro. But this regime, which was supported at first by the majority of the working class and peasantry, and which from its inception reflected the radicalization of the petty-bourgeois sectors, had already undergone a profound erosion. In fact, it had proved incapable of resolving the problems that were at the bottom of the revolutionary crisis of 1952. The economy of the country did not progress; the workers were robbed of their political and economic gains; the peasantry, while having received part of the land, still lived in extreme poverty and were subjected to the control of a narrow and conservative bureaucracy; the urban petty bourgeoisie could not escape from its poverty or make use of the democratic rights that it had fought for in its struggle against the oligarchic regimes; in spite of the nationalization of the mines, the country remained in the grip of imperialism and its international financial institutions. In the absence of a revolutionary leadership capable of developing them in preparation for a concerted struggle for power, the elements of dual power instituted by the working class and peasantry (formation of militias, workers control, union control over the radio, etc.) were gradually eliminated.
After a period of disillusionment and partial demobilization, the masses gradually resumed their struggles; and the last years of the regime were marked by growing conflicts between the government and the working class, which coincided with active mobilizations by sectors of the urban petty bourgeoisie and students. In the army itself— as the incidents of October 1964 (the Sora Sora battle) indicated - signs of demoralization had appeared as soldiers refused to take part in the repression. The military coup d'etat carried out by Barrientos was a preventive one aimed at blocking the new upsurge of the mass movement.
Seen at first by the masses as a victory, the political shift of November 4, 1964, stopped this mass movement from going ahead according to its own dynamic to establish a relationship of forces more favorable to the working class. The new regime started out by making demagogic denunciations of the veiled dictatorship of Paz and was quick to identify itself with revolutionary nationalist traditions. Barrientos was playing for time, and for a few months he was obliged to accept a situation where the masses, who in some areas were once again armed, enjoyed certain democratic rights, notably the freedom to rebuild their unions and political organizations. But this was only a very brief interlude.
The military government began to work rather rapidly and energetically to attain three essential objectives: the reestablishment of "law and order" in the mining regions, the establishment of an alliance with the peasant bureaucracy enabling the government to control or neutralize the peasantry, an economic "rationalization" based on a drastic reduction of workers' wages. These objectives were largely achieved by the only means possible: the establishment of a ruthless military dictatorship. The army occupied the mining regions; the unions were banned for all practical purposes. All democratic rights were suppressed, and the leaders of the workers movement were arrested, exiled, or forced to go underground.
The stability of the new regime was precarious above all because of the narrowness of its social base and the nonexistence of any economic margin for maneuver.
Yet it lasted for about five years. This was not the result of real achievements or of a total crushing of the mass movement, but, in the last analysis, of a relative equilibrium of forces in the given domestic and international context. Barrientos did at any rate carry off one important operation successfully: The army began more and more to play the role of the political party of the ruling class and to involve itself deeply in running the country at all levels. This operation compensated for the absence or extreme weakness of the more or less traditional parties.
The defeat of Che's guerrillas brought an additional respite for Barrientos. But he did not have the means to take advantage of it; on the contrary, serious frictions developed in the army and the government itself, and new mass mobilizations began to take form. During the government of Siles Salinas, who succeeded Barrientos, the deterioration of the regime further accelerated. The army found itself obliged to make a sudden turn: the new president, General Ovando, charted a reformist course.
2. General Ovando's coup of September 26, 1969, was not unlike the one that occurred in November 4, 1964. It was dictated by the need to deal with a rapidly deteriorating situation marked by an increasingly abrupt upturn in the mass movement. However, precisely because of the failure of the right-wing dictatorship, the army-party had to shift its course. It wanted to be seen as a political force that had pondered the lessons of the re cent past, one capable even of understanding the motivations for the guerrilla actions and envisaging a revolutionary nationalist, anti-imperialist solution for the problems racking the broad masses. The nationalization of Gulf Oil was the gesture that most symbolized an orientation of trying to achieve more favorable relations with imperialism and stimulate the development of native capital. By a propaganda campaign relying primarily on anti-imperialist demagogy, the perspective of an economic boom, prosocialist rhetoric, statements about the need for reorganizing the state on a "national" basis and for an industrial revolution in the countryside, the reformist wing sought to win the support or favor of the masses of workers, peasants, and urban petty bourgeoisie. The relative success that the Velas-co government obtained in its first year in Peru, and the "new" perspectives being outlined even by imperialist circles, which were expressed most explicitly by the Rockefeller Report, seemed to offer an international opening for Ovando's re formism.
In the framework of the given relationship of forces, this operation inevitably involved paying the price of restoring the rights of unions and political organizations of the working class and accepting as a fact of life the new mass upsurge that was taking form. The fact that Ovando was not in position to keep his promises, and that the turn he projected had only extremely modest practical results, then provoked the outbreak of serious conflicts and later on heightened the combativity of the masses, who had now gained considerable freedom of action.
The maneuvers of bourgeois sectors unwilling to assume the costs of the new course, and the machinations of the imperialist circles, who refused to grant any concessions, provoked a new crisis twelve months after Ovando came to power. This crisis proved to be all the more serious in that the army had become politically divided, and in its inability to arrive at a basic compromise, responded to the situation by conflicting moves. The right wing of the military probably underestimated the reaction of the left as well as the level of mass mobilization. However, as soon as it was clear that the masses were ready to intervene actively against any fascist or profascist attempt, the military, recognizing the danger, was largely able to reach common agree ment on the basis of supporting a reformist course. But, as a result of the crisis and the warning signal it represented in the eyes of the masses, Torres, who succeeded Ovando, had to sound more radical.
This involved in practice some additional measures aimed at the imperialist positions and, above all, more clear-cut economic and political con cessions to the working class. In this context, while the crisis of the regime had continued to worsen (reactionary plans, conspiracies, maneuvers, and foreign pressure), the upsurge of the masses assumed a breadth and strength that had not been seen since April 1952, extending from the proletariat to broad sectors of the urban petty bourgeoisie and even some sectors of the peasantry. The convocation of the Popular Assembly in May 1971 symbolically marked the high point of this upsurge.
The downfall of the Torres govern ment, ignominiously overturned in the space of a few hours, is in the last analysis, a further confirmation that any "democratic, anti-imperialist, anti-oligarchic" stage is objectively impossible in Bolivia, and any consolidation for any time at all of a bourgeois democratic regime is equally impossible. As soon as a powerful mass movement develops, its dynamic tends irresistibly to call into question the capitalist system itself so that a decisive confrontation rapidly becomes inevitable. The tragedy of the Bolivian proletariat was that the majority of the organizations claiming to represent the working class did not understand that such an outcome was inevitable or, even when they sensed the danger, were incapable of assuming all the political and organizational consequences that followed.
3. Banzer assumed power as the result of a realignment of the army be hind a reactionary orientation and of the support he received from American imperialism and Brazilian sub-imperialism. His coup was inspired in particular by national bourgeois sectors that had profited from a partial economic boom in certain regions during the six ties. These sectors, which have ties to the Brazilian as well as the Argentine bourgeoisie, went so far as to threaten a secession of part of the country, and this blackmail contributed much to the army's decision to shelve Torres, now considered incapable of controlling the situation, and to reestablish a right-wing dictatorship. The agreement with the Falange aimed, in addition, at making it possible to collaborate with the conservative sectors of the middle classes; and the compromise with the MNR corresponded to the necessity of winning support from popular sectors or neutralizing them. It was in this perspective precisely that Banzer avoided a direct confrontation in the mining regions. The heterogeneous composition of the governing bloc was one of the reasons for the instability of the new military regime, shaken on several occasions by internal crises. The conflicts of interests among the bourgeoisies of other countries, especially Argentina and Brazil, also played a role. In such a context it was impossible for Banzer to completely crush the workers movement. (He even had to allow partial functioning of the unions in the proletarian areas.) The result was that important demonstrations and strikes took place, especially in October-November 1972, clearly indicating the will of sectors of the proletariat and the urban petty bourgeoisie, who had been hit by harsh economic measures, to resist and counterattack.
Still it would be erroneous to underestimate the essential fact: By setting back and dealing hard blows to a tempestuous mass movement, Banzer's coup d'etat enabled the ruling classes to overcome the gravest crisis of the last twenty years.
The national bourgeoisie and imperialism are perfectly conscious of the country's structural instability and of the danger of more mass upsurges.
They recognize the necessity -from their point of view —of coming up with relatively long-term plans for exploitation and political reorganization and for crushing the working class for an entire period. On the one hand, they must seek to stimulate an economic growth, which, although deformed and incomplete, would reinforce the social position of the bourgeoisie, involve sections of the middle layers, and assure some outlets for at least a part of the growing mass of unemployed and semiemployed workers. On the other hand, they have to provide themselves with a more "scientific" repressive apparatus, capable of following the example set by the gorilla regime in Brazil.
Although Banzer has not taken any decisive step in this direction, there are some indications —economic projects, decisions to form regional blocs, military aid, etc.— that the native ruling classes and imperialism are striving to act along these lines. It would be wrong to imagine that their initiatives are doomed to rapid and complete failure in every situation.
### II.
4. While representing a small minority of the population, the proletariat played a crucial role in the major struggles of recent decades owing to its position in the key sector of the economy and its geographic concentration. It is in this concentration that the strength of the working class resides — the citadel of the mining regions has created grave problems for all the governments, and they have often been forced to grant significant concessions, and on several occasions, even to tolerate situations of dual power. But at the same time this geographic position and the relative isolation have at times prevented an effective mobilization at crucial turning points. Moreover, it has made it easier to repress the workers through out-and-out massacres.
The Bolivian miners attained a high level of trade-union consciousness fairly early, and they have periodically been impelled by the very conditions they live in to organize powerful political mobilizations. Their combativity and their capacity to rebound, even after the most severe blows, are without equal in the South American continent. But that has not been sufficient to bring them to a general political self-consciousness or an understanding of the need for an independent working-class political organization, distinct from the unions.
As in most of the other Latin American countries, the Bolivian proletariat has not lived through the experience of the traditional Social Democratic or Stalinist mass organizations. In the specific context of Bolivia this involved two consequences: the formation of political groups moving directly toward revolutionary Marxism and the mobilization of a great majority of the proletariat for a long period under the banner of revolutionary nationalist movements that had a petty-bourgeois leadership and worked in the interest of the so-called national bourgeoisie. This phenomenon explains why these movements in Bolivia were so radical at their height, and this radicalism in turn explains why the MNR was able for a very long period to maintain hegemony or at least very significant influence over the working class.
The insurrection of April 1952 enabled the working class to wrest important victories (including workers control and militias) and for years to maintain a high level of combativity and very high consciousness of its own strength. But subordination to the leadership of a party that in the last analysis represented the interests of other classes prevented the proletariat from formulating a tactic and strategy corresponding to the needs of its struggle in a situation of revolutionary crisis that objectively placed on the agenda the question of proletarian power. In a general sense, April 1952 was the February of Bolivia. The acceptance of the leadership of the MNR blocked the working class from taking the road to October. This was the historic price paid for the ab sence of a politically independent working-class organization, of a revolutionary party with broad mass influence.
5. The MNR would not have main tained its hegemony for so long and the proletariat would not have found itself politically disarmed under the
Barrientos dictatorship and under the reformist military regime if centrism had not stood in the way of constructing the revolutionary party.
Above all through Lechin and his faction, centrism served to prevent grow ing working-class opposition to the MNR government from breaking out of the framework of the regime and the party. Thus it prevented this opposition from becoming the concrete point of departure for general political maturation and the construction of an independent working-class party. This orientation did not change radically with the formation of the PRIN, which still retained a centrist stamp on its ideology as well as its political strategy, and especially its practical endeavors. It is true that since the birth of the new party, Lechin has sought to present himself as the spokes man of the revolutionary aspirations of the working class, but in reality he never went beyond struggles for immediate demands, limiting himself in the broader political realm to demagogic proclamations about the need for socialism and revolution, which he completely failed to back up with an adequate strategy. Lechin's greatest skill — paid for at an extremely high price by the masses who put their trust in him — was always to evade making hard decisions at crucial turning points. He utilized the COB apparatus much more than the PRIN as his instrument for influencing the masses.
Taking an ambiguous position during the first stage of the Barrientos government, Lechin flirted with Che's guerrilla front but carefully refrained from committing the forces and influence still at his disposal. Finally, during the period of military reformism, in spite of all his demagogic pretenses and a certain tendency to edge to the left of the pro-Soviet CP and the opportunist Lora, the Lechin current effectively adapted to the Torres regime. This government, in fact, offered virtually ideal conditions for Lechin's traditional performances — appearing as the number one defender of the mining proletariat; utilizing the bureaucratic machine of the COB, which was quickly reestablished; making declarations about revolution and socialism that were as bombastic as they were empty of practical content. Owing to its composition, its origin, and functions, the Popular Assembly was bound to become the natural culminating point of all these new gestures: the louder the speeches, the less prepared the proletariat became for the approaching outcome. The result was that once again the masses found themselves unarmed in the face of a ruthless attack by the forces of repression.
The complete rejection of centrism in all its forms is an essential condition for the working class to be able to launch its counterattack and to be in position to effectively wage its revolutionary struggle for power.
6. In 1952 the peasantry was one of the motor forces of the revolutionary movement, one of the pillars of the new regime. Through the agrarian reform, their traditional enemies were destroyed and they received the land, freeing themselves from centuries of submission. To defend their gains and assert their force, the peasants organized their own militias, which, together with the workers militias, introduced real elements of dual power for an entire period.
But after winning their land — if only part of it-and after becoming small landowners —if very poverty-stricken ones -the peasants began to demobilize and become conservative. They remained organized and even partially armed. But their organization gave birth to a peasant bureaucracy that linked itself to the government, becoming the instrument of conservatism and repression; and the militias themselves —where they survived — increasingly became the armed wing of this bureaucratic apparatus. An additional factor was a growing demoralization that came from see ing that, given the lack of financial and technical aid, the ownership of the land did not mean any change in the productivity of the soil or standard of living. Thus the peasant movement be gan increasingly to ebb, to split up, to express itself only through sporadic and limited actions, to lose all revolutionary dynamism. It was thrown onto the de fensive and in this mood remained passively attached to the regime that had given it the land.
This demobilization of the peasantry has now lasted for fifteen years; among other things, it constituted one of the more serious limitations of the 1970- 71 upsurge and was consequently one of the elements contributing to Banzer's reactionary coup.
7. The radicalization of petty-bourgeois sectors in the 1940s and 1950swas expressed in partially contradictory phenomena. The MNR was to a large extent an expression of this radicalization, which, however, was also mani fested in petty-bourgeois elements joining the Stalinist or pro-Stalinist formations that had opposed revolutionary nationalism during the second world war and immediately after, incorrectly characterizing it as a fascist current. Paradoxically it was only later, as the MNR became more and more conservative, that the CP began to support it — in tribute to its Menshevik conceptions of the revolution in Latin America -thus helping to prolong the hegemony of a bourgeois leadership over the masses.
The Barrientos period, especially from 1966-67, marked an important stage in the ripening of considerable sectors of the urban petty bourgeoisie. It was above all at this time that the students began to radicalize, thus becoming part of a worldwide phenomenon. Che's undertaking was an additional stimulant to this new wave of radicalization, which the defeat of the guerrilla front in no way slowed down. Unfortunately, this radicalization and the legitimate rejection of worn-out schemata of the peaceful road and revolution by stages went hand in hand with a wide adherence to spontaneism of the Debrayist type and to focoist conceptions. The lesson of 1967 did not lead to any serious rethinking. On the contrary, the Teoponte guerrilla action of 1970 bore the bitterest fruits of focoist adventurism. This experience was like a symbol of the sterility of a basically petty-bourgeois concept that claimed to conceive a revolutionary initiative by abstracting from the real dynamic of the class struggle and of all participation by the working class and the impoverished peasantry.
### III.
8. Revolutionary Marxists will not be able to define their strategy and orientation without drawing up a balance sheet of two crucial events of the period following the downfall of the MNR regime — the guerrilla experience of 1967 and the defeat of August 1971.
Guevara and his comrades took the initiative in opening guerrilla war in a political context that fully justified the launching of armed struggle. On the one hand, by eliminating the last vestiges of bourgeois democracy, the Barrientos dictatorship had closed all possibility for the workers movement to take legal action; on the other hand, the masses, far from being crushed and demoralized, showed signs of growing combativity. Since September 1965, the vanguard forces had decided on a perspective of armed struggle in the form of guerrilla war.
All this was confirmed by the response the guerrilla action immediately had among the masses, giving rise to considerable mobilizations. It was also confirmed by the lasting political repercussions Che's action had even after his rapid defeat.
Having said this and without in any way minimizing the turn marked by the guerrilla action in the political struggle of Bolivia, a series of critical considerations are called for.
First of all, the choice of terrain was questionable. This choice, in fact, did not offer the advantage of carrying out preparations before the launching of operations and at the same time prevented any contact with the local population. Secondly, if Guevara was correct in placing the Bolivian guerrilla action in a continental perspective, his analyses of the conjunctural situation in other countries — especially Peru — were either excessively general or ill founded. But the fundamental deficiency concerned the links with the social and political forces necessary to assure the indispensable political and logistical support. Che's diary provides clear indications of this.
Certainly Guevara was not unaware of this central problem, and he understood that he could not solve it without appealing to the militants and the cadres of the existing workers movement. But his mistake was to depend on the pro- Soviet CP, or on a sector of this party, and to a lesser extent, on a rotten centrist like the bureaucrat Lechin. The fact that the choice was largely dictated by the Cuban political orientation at the time of the Tricontinental Conference (the break with the Chinese, Fidel's Stalinist-like attack on Trotskyism) explains this decision, but obviously does not justify it.
The second error resided in an objectively sectarian conception of the political relationships among the forces favoring armed struggle. It was cor rect in principle to strongly advocate a united military front. It was also correct for the group that took the initiative to uphold Che in the leadership role he normally played. But from this it did not follow that all those who wanted to join in the guerrilla action had to automatically accept the political leadership of the ELN and even less to dissolve organizationally. The attitude of the ELN leadership in this matter, besides providing an alibi for Mon-je and Company, was a very grave obstacle to reinforcing the core of fighters and even more so to substantially expanding the guerrilla action.
It was because of these errors that the guerrillas did not succeed in establishing effective links with the masses, in taking root, in building up at least a minimum of solid infrastructure, that they could not increase their strength as rapidly as necessary by bringing in other forces that were available from the earliest months. Thus, when the repression struck its first hard blows, the results were catastrophic and Che's group was condemned to the most tragic isolation. Hence, it was inevitable that they would be liquidated in a short time.
9. Concerning the events of August 1971, the question arises as to why a mass movement that had been experiencing a spectacular rise right up to the time of the events was crushed with extreme rapidity without its putting up significant resistance.
In a very general sense, the deciding factor once again was the absence of a revolutionary party rooted in the masses on a national scale. It has to be pointed out that, in spite of past experiences, the opportunist parties and currents had succeeded in maintaining their hegemony over the majority of the working class and the radicalized petty bourgeoisie.
But at the same time we must remember that the peasantry did not mobilize on a national scale either during the upsurge or at the moment of the coup. Peasant struggles took place in 1970 and 1971, especially around La Paz and Santa Cruz. But although they pointed to a possible trend that did not pass unnoticed by the frightened bourgeoisie who were already preparing their coup, these incidents failed to go beyond the level of local explosions. Such a situation made it possible for the army to concentrate its efforts on the cities, even on a limited number of cities, thus increasing its chances for rapid success.
Secondly, in spite of all the demagogic statements and the formal adoption of seemingly very radical documents, the majority of the workers move ment and the petty bourgeoisie did not have a clear understanding of the nature of Torres's movement. Likewise they did not understand the ineluctable dynamic of the situation. The lack of rigorous analysis and the failure to expose completely the nature of military reformism and its nebulous ideology prevented the masses from gaining a clear perspective, from grasping in a concrete way that a major confrontation was in evitable in the near future. Even worse, the illusion was broadcast that in face of a "fascist" attack, Torres himself would counterattack with the help of at least the army, and in the end, he would be forced to give arms to the people clamoring for them.
The error in analysis also involved the evaluation of the gains made by the working class upsurge and especially the significance of this Popular Assembly that attracted worldwide attention. The Assembly, which Torres was forced to accept, was without question a reflection of the strength of the mass movement. It was an indication of a situation of embryonic dual power and represented an effective instrument for revolutionary propaganda and agitation, as well as a forum for discussion among the various currents on the crucial problems. But it had no decision-making power, no real force to impose its possible deliberations, and even more importantly, did not directly express the sovereign will of the masses. It was not based in the slightest on democratic organs elected in the factories, in the villages, in the working-class suburbs, or in the army. In this decisive terrain no comparison is possible with the Russian Soviets of 1917. In addition, the composition was decided by arbitrary criteria, and sectarian pettiness often took precedence over general political considerations. Finally, the essential questions — including the approaching political tests and the means to counter the imminent coup — were ignored or evaded. In fact, the Assembly appeared much more like a sterile and impotent parliament than an instrument for mobilizing the masses. At the time of the coup d'etat, it proved totally incapable of providing any orientation whatever, or of leading the armed resistance of the masses.
In the context of a revolutionary upsurge, of a crisis of the ruling-class apparatus, on the eve of a major confrontation, which in the last analysis poses the question of power, the problems of armed struggle become the decisive political problems. The great majority of the leaders of the labor move ment forgot this fundamental truth. They were caught up in the illusion that it was possible to continuously postpone the final battle, to force Torres and the "anti-fascist" sectors of the army to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. To the extent that they took up the problem of armed struggle — in any case without any attempt at systematization — they were unable to go beyond the insurrectionalist and spontaneist conception refuted by numerous tragic experiences in Bolivia and elsewhere.
The revolutionary front had also been weakened in other respects by adventurist and militarist errors committed by certain of its adherents, especially the ELN. The ELN had not assimilated the lessons of 1967, had not overcome its sectarian and bureaucratic tendencies. It did not grasp the meaning of the September 1969 turn in time-that is why it embarked upon the disastrous adventure of Teoponte, wasting courageous cadres and playing into the hands of the opportunists and centrists. Even after Teoponte, the ELN persisted in its confused orientation, to the detriment of the mass work that could have and should have been developed.
### IV.
10. The Bolivian
Trotskyist move ment came onto the political stage around 1940. In its fourth national conference early in 1946, it set up a nationwide structure that enabled it to focus its activity on winning a foothold among the masses of mine workers who, at that time, were consolidating their trade-union organizations. Although the movement achieved sufficient strength to elect deputies and senators to the parliament, it was unable, because of a series of errors, internal conflicts, and the effects of the 1949-50 repression, to compete effectively with the MNR for the leadership of the working class and the poor middle layers. In the period immediately following April 1952, the POR was able to expand. It won a real influence both among the peasantry — where it gave impetus to the development of peasant trade-unions and to land occupations — and among the miners. Fighting to create the COB, it won a majority in the assemblies of this organization; and it used this majority to mobilize the masses to force the nationalization of the mines under workers control and with the right of veto. Its ideological influence was reflected in the drawing up of the first statement of principles of the COB, which provided a pole of regroupment for the masses in opposition to the bourgeois government.
The POR's political activity brought about a situation in which two lines and two programs confronted each other in practice: the line of the bourgeoisie with its aspirations of independent development, and the line of the revolutionary working class. Because of the threat it represented, the POR was harshly attacked by the MNR regime. It was violently repressed, and finally suffered a split because of the capitulation of the Lora-Moller tendency, which left the ranks of Trotskyism to enter the MNR in October 1954. This split in the POR weakened it and prevented it from taking full advantage of the subsequent crises of the Paz Estenssoro regime and the masses' growing disaffection from the MNR.
However, the capacity for analysis of the leading nucleus who maintained the party's continuity, and the positive impact of the Cuban revolution in Bolivia, enabled the POR to win important regional positions, to recruit new cadres, and to intervene effectively in the events of October-November 1964. Once Barrientos had successfully installed his brutal dictatorship, the POR understood that it was necessary to formulate a new orientation of armed struggle, and, be ginning in 1965, it began to prepare for it.
Later, when Che's guerrilla project be-gan in 1967, the POR understood the revolutionary importance of this initiative, expressed its support for the project, and stated its resolve to intervene directly. It was in a good position to enter into the struggle immediately, offering forces that were modest in size but nonetheless considerable in relation to the size of Che's detachments. However, these possibilities were not realized, basically because of the political and military sabotage of the leaders of the ELN's urban network. These were generally sectarian, anti-Trotskyist elements who were still linked to the Moscow-oriented CP, and who erected all kinds of barriers to participation by the POR. 11. After Che's death, the POR, with the agreement of the leadership of the International, adopted an orientation of resuming the armed struggle based on a conception that involved overcoming the errors committed and drawing the lessons of the defeat. Specifically, in the work of reorganizing the guerrilla forces in which the POR engaged, the need was recognized for linking the armed struggle to the mass movement and the class struggle in this period. This orientation was discussed and enriched at the Ninth World Congress.
The POR considered that a prerevolutionary situation existed in Bolivia as well as on a continental scale. It emphasized that the army was now playing the role of a bourgeois party in power; that no perspectives existed for relatively extensive democratic stages, such as to allow a growth and maturation of the workers movement and the revolutionary party in conditions of legality or pseudolegality; that any mass upsurge and any working-class political and economic conquest of the least importance would inevitably provoke a major confrontation in the immediate future between the mass movement and the repressive forces. The POR reminded Bolivian revolutionists that not only the indigenous enemy, but also American imperialism and its allies in other countries in the continent, stood in their path. The POR developed its conception of the armed struggle on the basis of this analysis, rejecting the concept that the armed confrontation would occur at the last moment, during the insurrection of the masses. It was therefore necessary to prepare for a long and difficult struggle that would probably assume a continental scale. The initial form of this struggle would be guerrilla warfare in three aspects-rural, urban, and based on the miners. Such a guerrilla struggle could grow without becoming iso lated from the masses and without being confined to one particular sector. Precisely because the revolutionary workers and peasants movement in Bolivia had a very long tradition of struggle, precisely because many cadres had reflected on the past experiences and understood the blind alley of the traditional concepts, precisely because there were no margins for democratic concessions, the organizers of the armed struggle could count from the beginning on the direct participation of workers, peasants, and politicized students, and establish solid links with the mass movement.
In retrospect, this orientation, which warned against the illusion that there could be a democratic stage of any significant duration, and which put the armed struggle in the forefront as one of the essential tasks of the POR, was proved correct.
But the conception of armed struggle held by the POR and the International still remained very vague on the process of development from guerrilla nuclei established by the party to the formation of a mass revolutionary army. From this standpoint, the influence of the comrades of the PRT(C) weighed on the conceptions of the POR without being counterbalanced by the influence of the International. In fact, because of its traditions and its essentially working-class and peasant implantation (about 90 percent of its members)— which was quite different from the
PRT(C)'s —
the POR followed two paths at the same time: while advancing propagandistically and sometimes abstractly the necessity of the Revolutionary Army, it correctly developed specific proposals for arming the proletariat and the peasantry based on the organizations the masses recognized as their own (through workers militias and peasant regiments). Finally, in view of the very great weakness of the POR's infrastructure, there should have been a much clearer set of priorities as regards the party's immediate military tasks. From as early as September 1965, the POR had conceived of "guerrilla activity as a prolongation of mass struggle." Since 1968 the POR had specified that guerrilla activity could not be purely rural, but would have to be a combination of guerrilla activity in rural areas —selected according to political and not exclusively technical criteria — with guerrilla activity in mining regions and in the largest urban centers.
Applying this line, the POR in January 1968 reached an agreement with the ELN and the international forces that supported it that called for working together while maintaining the organizational and political independence of the two organizations. Only the development of the armed struggle over time, and the joint achieve ment of the tasks of the revolution, would pose the need for changes in this agreement. That is, the POR and the ELN would not fuse, but would maintain their respective organizational identities.
It was not easy to apply these agree ments in the concrete. In practice, it turned out that within the ELN there was some resistance and a Stalinist-like prejudice that delayed common work from the beginning. When this common work did begin, the relations between the POR and the ELN improved and the shared responsibility for tasks and common risks assured good working relations between the two organizations. But the repression of July 1969, followed by the assassination of Inti Peredo in September, paralyzed and disorganized these plans. The death of Inti Peredo broke off the evolution of his team toward a correct conception of guerrilla warfare as a factor in the class struggle and linked to the masses. This produced a very serious crisis, with internal divisions and conflicts, in the ELN leadership. The agreements with the POR became null and void, as each organization took its own road. This produced not only the rebirth of antiparty prejudices in the ELN, but also a return to the focoism that Inti had been striving to outgrow. The new leaders of the ELN did not take advantage of the situation created by Ovando and embarked instead on the tragic experience of Teoponte. The POR, in contrast, quickly understood the change that had occurred. It came out of the underground and became a semilegal organization. It convened a special conference in November 1969 where it analyzed the nature of the Ovando government and the meager possibilities for re formism, and predicted the inevitability of new confrontations in the immediate future. In practice, it reinforced its mass work while continuing to rebuild sections of the organization that had either been destroyed by the repression or disorganized by the cessation of common work with the ELN. It held an international cadre school in Santiago, brought out publications, and intervened in the struggle to win back the right of the workers to elect trade-union leaderships that would represent them. It was present at the miners congress in Siglo Veinte, where it drew up a transitional program that projected answers to immediate economic needs in combination with other tasks of a political character. The party championed the struggle for the rehiring of 3,500 miners who had been laid off under the Barrientos regime, a group that included almost all of our miners' leaders. It fought for restoring wages to the 1965 level, for the return of union local offices and workers radio stations, and for freeing the prisoners, including several leaders of the party. When Ovando issued a decree nationalizing Gulf Oil, the POR used this as a starting point for demanding nationalization of all imperialist holdings. Wherever steps were taken along these lines, Ovando intervened with his army to return this property to his imperialist bosses. The POR extended its actions to the university, intervening in Cochabamba, Oruro, and La Paz through the Che Guevara student move ment and winning an audience among the students for the first time in a long while, an achievement that enabled the party to intervene later on in the elections for the student centers. Among the workers and peasants, it developed the idea of arming the masses and creating armed detachments. Where it had influence it took the initiative itself in organizing such units, starting with its own members, as in the flour-mill workers union.
After a year in government, Ovando underwent a crisis. His supposed democratic opening had unleashed forces that he was unable to control. In despair, he came into conflict with the church, expelling priests and evangelical ministers accused of intervening in political life. In the end, he compromised himself by attacking the universities of La Paz, Cochabamba, and Sucre. Faced with the deterioration of the situation, the military commanders and the imperialists decided, with the agreement of Ovando himself, to prepare for a change in regime. General Miranda's impatience provoked the crisis of the first week of October 1970. The air force resisted Miranda, creating a pole around which the discontented officers - including General Torres, who had just been relieved of the high command of the armed forces —could gather. This sector appealed to the COB for support, offering it 50 percent of the ministries in the next cabinet. Invoking the specter of the masses who in 1952 had defeated the army, the anti-Miranda opposition led by Torres shifted the situation to its own advantage at a historic Assembly of Generals and Officers held in the main barracks of Miraflores at La Paz.
The COB, whose principal leader was Lechin, organized the Political Command to conduct discussions with the new government on the organization of the cabinet. The Political Command included the MNR and all the left-wing parties with the exception only of the POR(C) and the ELN. Once the military crisis had been resolved in his favor. General Torres withdrew his offer of 50 percent of the ministers to the COB, substituting a promise to implement a program of measures approved by the COB. This threw the Political Command into crisis, with the result that the MNR left this body and it was to all intents and purposes shelved.
As previously with Ovando, so also with Torres the bourgeoisie and imperialism tried to win time to rebuild their front and to overcome the disagreements among the officers over command posts and careers. But the mass upsurge that had precipitated Ovando's downfall continued to grow, leading to the emergence of the Popular Assembly.
Under Torres, the POR passed from the semilegality that it had under Ovando to legality.
In the ten months of the Torres government, the POR revamped its organization, with the aid of the Chilean comrades, and held cadre schools in Cochabamba and Oruro. It held a plenum of its Central Committee and decided to convene a national congress. The release of the imprisoned comrades strengthened its activity in the unions. In La Paz, we won the leadership of the flour-mill workers locals and a section of their national leadership. We won several posts in the miners union elections. At the COB congress in La Paz we dominated the political discussion and succeeded in obtaining support for a resolution presented by the POR delegation. And we won posts in the leadership. Winning some positions in the countryside, we were present at the congress of the independent peasants, and at least a third of the national peasant leadership were POR members.
The POR's position on the Popular Assembly was clear and consistent. In contrast to the reformists of all kinds who considered the Popular Assembly as a people's power from the outset, or who conceived of it as a body dependent on the government, the POR correctly held that: it would be wrong to call for all power to the Popular Assembly on the basis of arbitrary analyses; it would not be correct to set up an alternative power structure that the masses would not have understood.
However, making use of the "legitimacy" this assembly enjoyed in the eyes of the masses, the POR worked to transform it into a real soviet-type power. Our objective was to provide it with the following elements, which were either lacking or present only in an embryonic form. 1. A structure starting from the ranks and rising through intermediary organs to the national Popular Assembly.
2. The widest democracy at all levels, with election of delegates by rank-and-file bodies; delegates to be recallable at any moment, and obliged to account for their actions before these bodies. 3. Complete independence from the bourgeois government. The financing of the costs of the Assembly and the expenses of delegates to be handled directly by the workers organizations, in a completely independent way and without relying on the executive power, as had been done in May 1971 when General Torres had refused to support the Assembly economically and it was only possible to hold a token Assembly.
4. An armed force of its own that could serve as a real instrument for defending the Popular Assembly and have the capacity to enforce its decisions.
5. Inclusion of the peasants to a greater extent in order to correctly reflect an alliance of the proletariat and the peasantry. Election of delegates independently, through regional congresses.
It was with these conceptions that the POR worked. It was conscious of the limits of the Popular Assembly, but even in this framework it never came to consider the assembly as simply a platform for denunciations.
Moreover, the POR did not rest content with talking about these conceptions. It also took concrete initiatives in action at the departmental level in collaboration with the mass organizations.
Concretely, in Santa Cruz, basing itself on the Popular Assembly, the POR, in an alliance with the Sandoval Moron group, organized and led the armed occupation of the big landholdings belonging to Cooper and Company. It distributed these landholdings in order to establish housing projects. Similarly, in La Paz it worked to vitalize the COD (Departmental Workers Federation) and transform it into an active and dynamic branch of the Popular Assembly, a real embryo of workers power. Together with the peasant unions where it had some influence- as in the provinces of Camacho, Loaysa, and Nor Yungas in the department of La Paz — it organized the occupation of agricultural lands and the expulsion of the former landowners.
It was through these actions, linked to the masses, that the POR was able to win posts in the Popular Assembly. The participation of groups of its members in the confrontations of August 19 in Santa Cruz and August 21 at La Paz, and the sacrifice of Tomas Chambi and other comrades showed, moreover, that the POR had posed the military problem concretely, without being lulled to sleep by the illusions promoted by the opportunist and centrist leaders of the Popular Assembly and their unions.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that while the POR correctly analyzed the process and took a consistent position in the class struggle, it was not free of limitations, errors, and indecision, which it must overcome if it is to benefit politically from the results of its efforts and its sacrifices. While it is true that the experience of working with the ELN had positive results in enhancing the POR's image among the masses and enabling it to improve its situation (especially among university students, secondary students, and in some factories), that activity resulted in its losing the agility and audacity that had distinguished it in previous periods. The important thing is to understand that in united-front work and alliances of this nature, it is the initiative and impetus with which the revolutionists act to win the less enlightened sectors that determines how well such arrangements turn out politically and objectively.
In such activity, there must be a continual struggle for hegemony. If the POR had had a greater dynamism and clarity with respect to the armed struggle, it would have ensured a more rapid evolution among the more receptive cadres of the ELN, such as Inti, who had adopted an attitude of openness to working together.
This lack of aggressiveness on the part of the POR was also present during the Torres regime. The actions undertaken did not correspond to the objective needs and did not measure up even to the capacities of the party's own forces. The party's understanding of its tasks was not always on a par with the audacity required to dispel inertia through militant actions.
12. Under the
Banzer dictatorship,
Bolivia has been unable to escape its chronic political and economic instability. The masses' stubborn resistance to the repression of the military has prevented the latter from imposing on the country the social stability required by private investors. The oft-proclaimed "Brazilian-style economic miracle" the native exploiters dream of is nowhere to be seen. Instead, the economic crisis has continued to grow without letup. Inflation is again beginning to reach high levels, cutting into the masses' buying power. Bolivia's dependence on Yankee imperialism and Brazilian sub-imperialism prevents it from benefiting in any real way from the higher prices for raw materials, especially tin and petroleum. The permanence of this crisis has spurred the resistance of the masses, and repeatedly goads them into tenacious struggles. To absorb and arrest the growth of popular discontent, Banzer would have to satisfy the people's needs to some degree, to resolve the unemployment problem, or at least maintain if not raise the standard of living. But on the contrary, the masses' situation is constantly deteriorating. The recent monetary devaluations and the increase in the prices of basic foodstuffs will produce violent explosions among large sectors of the masses, as has already happened. Unemployment is becoming serious, and there is no development capable of absorbing the steady growth of the labor force in the countryside and the cities. The demand for manpower to pick cotton has absorbed only an insignificant part of the mass of unemployed, and the creation of 10,000 jobs in the public sector during the two years of the dictatorship has served only to lessen unemployment among the ranks of the parties that support the government.
The national income declines and the budgetary deficit increases year by year. Banzer's dictatorship has no immediate possibility of altering this situation. As this crisis sharpens, it impels the masses into struggle.
Despite the scope of the repression, the workers movement has been reawakened by the stimulus of the economic crisis and the blows constantly dealt to its standard of living. The trade unions have reemerged; the union federations in the mines, factories, construction sites and the banks, etc., have begun to function and have raised the question of reestablishing their central organization, the COB. Once set in motion, the mass movement has rapidly tended to combine its economic demands with other demands of a political character. The November 19, 1973, miners congress at Potosi ratified the union's socialist theses and came out against Banzer's policy of denationalizing oil and gas; it also called for a general amnesty, the freeing of the prisoners, the return of those who had been exiled, a 100 percent increase in wages, as well as the establishment of a minimum family wage and the sliding scale. Similar proposals are coming forward from the workers in manufacturing, in construction, among the teachers and the bank and shop employees.
As it has done in the past, this development of the workers movement, this relative strengthening of the unions, is producing a relative weakening of the regime, bringing to the fore new contradictions and conflicts in the governing front. Faced with the resolutions of the miners congress and the radicalization of the factories in La Paz, imperialism and the Bolivian bourgeoisie sense the approach of serious tensions, and they are hurrying to reorganize their front. The army, the real and absolute boss of the regime, has postponed indefinitely the elections promised by Banzer for June of this year and restored order in the FPN by sacrificing the Paz Estenssoro wing of the MNR. This wing has left the government, and its leaders have been expelled from
Bolivia. Within the cabinet, the army and private enterprise lean directly on each other. The FSB (Falange) has won some political positions. The most hard-line elements have come to the fore. At the same time, Banzer has settled the negotiations on oil and gas to Brazil's advantage, seeking resources to strengthen his hand for a new confrontation with the masses. The situation in Bolivia is ripening toward a new crisis in which the atomization and weakness of the revolutionary left continue to weigh as a negative factor, even if the workers organizations are exhibiting a certain revival. Moreover, there is the contradiction that the reformist and Stalinist leaders, who have not measured up to the demands posed by the new development of the workers movement in the specific conditions of the repression in Bolivia, remain in important leadership posts. For example, at their congress at Potosi in November [1973], the miners reelected their old, heterogeneous leadership. Faced with the advance of the process, the reformists and Stalinists continue to act as brakes on the movement and now they hope to divert the workers movement into a national-democratic struggle. That is the meaning of the four-party pact between the two CPs, the PRIN, and the MNR of Siles Zuazo, and the movement led by General Torres, which publicly identifies with Argentine Peronism.
In this context of class struggle, the revolutionary Marxists have the duty to help build a leadership equal to the demands of the process. But a leadership of this nature can arise only from an intensive political activity that combines discussions to clarify the nature of the Bolivian revolution, as well as the strategy and tactics needed, with real, concrete action within the mass movement.
The Bolivian revolutionary process brought about the unity of the masses within the COB and the Popular Assembly. Consequently, the Bolivian left was also impelled to unity during the struggles of August 21, 1971. Once the defeat had occurred, this unity was projected in exile, giving birth to the FRA. The POR's participation in the FRA was a result of the unity achieved in the battles of the 19th and 21st of August by the whole left, the workers organizations affiliated to the COB, and sections of the officers corps of the army and the federal police who had joined in the struggle against the military coup d'etat. At this level, the party committed the error of signing the first leaflet that announced the formation of the FRA and that was ambiguous about the socialist character of the Bolivian revolution — a question that had been defined and clarified through the approval of the founding charter of the FRA and its military plan, which defined the front as a political-military organism fighting for socialism and composed of the fundamental parties and workers organizations of the country. It is this error, embodied in the signing of such a document, and not the participation in the front —which was correct— that motivated the International's criticism. The POR accepted that criticism in its self-criticism of April 1, 1972. The participants in the FRA, including the two Communist parties, the PRIN, the Socialist party, and the MIR committed themselves to a struggle to lead the proletariat to power without intermediary governmental forms.
But the FRA split at its upper levels and remained paralyzed. These parties made an about-face. Returning to their old theories, they repeat today that the objective conditions do not exist for the struggle for socialism and subscribe to the line of broad fronts to bring to power nationalist governments involving coalition with the bourgeoisie. This was the aim of the two CPs, the pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese, with the PRIN and the MNR led by Siles Zuazo in joining together to form the "Front of the Four." Their perspective has now changed. They think they see rifts within the bourgeoisie, and they believe in the existence of a progressive sector. They are waiting for the Ban-zer dictatorship to provide a certain democratic opening. They base this illusion on the facts that the workers movement is functioning semilegally and the dictatorship has proposed general elections and a broad amnesty. Reality is putting the lie to the hopes of the reformists. The army and private investors have placed their support in the government. The elections have been postponed indefinitely and no general amnesty is foreseen. The dictatorship is preparing to take on the masses.
The revolutionary Marxists must combat these deviations by raising again and again the question of the nature of the Bolivian revolution — not only propagandistically, but concretely, through a policy of unity in action along opposing lines, based on the experience of the masses and their political achievements.
The fundamental premise of any revolutionary perspective is that no revolution by stages can resolve the economic, political, and social problems at the heart of the country's chronic crisis and of the age-old suffering of the masses. In this regard, the experience of the MNR regime was definitive. As a result of the steps taken during the insurrection of 1952, the objective basis for a "democratic and anti-oligarchical" revolution has disappeared, and any revolutionary process has to pursue objectively anticapitalist and socialist goals from the very outset. More than any other neocolonial country, the Bolivian revolution will follow a dynamic of permanent revolution or it will not go forward. This is the fundamental lesson to be drawn from the events of 1971, which have revealed without the slightest ambiguity the extreme precariousness and fragility of any "democratic-reformist" endeavor that fails to break out of the framework of the system as such.
From this it follows that revolutionists must reject any policy advocating direct or indirect collaboration with the so-called national bourgeoisie or some sectors of it. The battle in this field is, in the last analysis, a fight for the political autonomy of the proletariat, which, in spite of its militancy and heroism, has long remained under the grip of bourgeois or petty bourgeois movements or caudillos and has continued to suffer the ideological influence of petty-bourgeois revolutionary nationalism even in the recent period under the military reformism of General Torres. This traditional conception of revolutionary Marxism is complemented by a clear idea of the role of the peasantry —the principal ally of the driving force of the revolution, the working class. Currents that ignore or minimize the importance of the peasant masses for the Bolivian revolutionary process, and which hold that the striking force of the working class is sufficient to defeat the capitalist state apparatus, must be opposed. Experience has shown that as long as the peasantry is not mobilized, the working class inevitably runs the risk in any revolutionary upsurge of finding itself isolated and in a situation in which the repressive forces can be concentrated against it in a head-on confrontation, as happened during the many massacres of workers and on August 21, 1971, with the well-known results. For this reason, one of the primary tasks of the POR in this period is to deepen and update its analyses of the social and economic situation in the countryside and the tendencies that are ripening there; to work out a policy likely to win a response among the peasants, and to lay the basis for integrating them fully into struggles in alliance with the proletariat. The POR must make more precise distinctions among the social categories that are shaping up in the countryside as a result of the agrarian re form: the agricultural proletariat of the plantations and sugar refineries that is developing mainly in the eastern part of the country; the poor peasants holding only a small amount of land and who don't work for wages; and the middle peasants. Similarly, the POR must analyze the phenomenon of colonization, that is, the movement of sectors of the population of the countryside and even unemployed workers from the Altiplano [high plateau] and the valleys of the virgin lands of the tropical zones. Each of these categories has its own characteristics and demands, which must be taken into account if they are to be mobilized in alliance with the proletariat. The POR must intensify its work in the countryside, drawing up platforms of demands based on the needs of each of these categories, in order to tap their full revolutionary potential.
The importance of peasant work flows not only from general theoretical con siderations, but from its concrete role in the phase of confrontation that we are experiencing. Bolivia is a country with a large peasant population. A large part of the army is also composed of peasants. The awakening and revolutionary mobilization of the peasantry will constitute an additional factor in the disintegration of the armed forces of the bourgeoisie.
On the basis of the understanding of the need for armed struggle that was introduced by the Ninth [World] Congress and of its own experience from 1967 to 1971, the POR must formulate clearly its concept of armed struggle suited to the present political conditions in Bolivia. The armed struggle corresponded to the needs of the masses and the class struggle. That is why even Che's guerrilla force in 1967 was accepted by the broad masses, because they saw it as a practical and concrete form of liberating themselves from the vicious circle of military interventions and massacres, and of applying what was being said continually by the declarations of the workers congresses on the struggle for power and for socialism. That is why, even despite the defeat, the guerrillas brought about a qualitative leap in political struggles in Bolivia and stimulated mass mobilizations and struggles.
Two conceptions of the armed struggle that are counterposed but equally false must be rejected in toto: the conception of the foco, which leaves out the class struggle; and the conception of the spontaneous insurrection, which reduces the armed confrontation to the final stage of the process of the struggle for power, and which expects that the masses will at that moment solve the problem of arming themselves, without having any military organization of their own. The POR correctly viewed the armed struggle as an integral part of its political conception of power and avoided falling into militarist deviations. It always insisted that the objective of armed guerrilla actions must be to strengthen the party's roots in the mass movement in order to promote the political and armed action of the masses themselves. Armed actions — that is, military activity— are not counterposed to party-building, but are linked with political work among the masses as inseparable components of an over all strategy for breaking out of the trammels of populism, spontaneism, and re formism and taking power.
13. In light of the Bolivian experience, the process should follow an evolution that can be summed up as follows: a. The present stage where the workers movement is reviving in conditions of harsh repression against the vanguard, where a certain possibility for semilegal functioning by the mass organizations goes hand in hand with underground conditions for vanguard political organizations.
Corresponding to this period are types of concrete political and military activity that must be dialectically combined: 1. Armed initiatives of the vanguard organizations, carried out by their armed detachments. The latter have as their objective stimulating the workers and peasants movement -fostering the idea among the masses that they must arm themselves and form their own militias —as well as accumulating human forces and material and technical means.
These armed-struggle initiatives can and should take place in mining and rural areas as well as in the big urban concentrations. However, in this specific phase, when the factory and mine proletariat is leading the workers movement and can be expected to be the center of conflicts and confrontations, the party must stage its armed actions in this sector and in accordance with this sector's needs. 2. Intervention in present struggles where mobilizations involve massive sectors and could lead to the rebirth of embryonic forms of dual power in the old tradition of the trade-union militias and the peasant regiments. Within this perspective, the arming of the masses will tend to generalize and be concretized in armed worker-peasant detachments. Intervention by the party will be essential to avoid a falling into the same trap as in the past when the old-style, fundamentally defensive militias did not serve to open the way for an advance toward the seizure of power. In view of this past experience, the military initiative of the detachments of the party and the vanguard groups must give impetus to a new, offensive type of militias with a capacity for mobility. Propaganda about arming the masses and the development of their own armed forces is not sufficient; the party and vanguard organizations must put themselves at the center of this work, stimulating the masses while strengthening their mobilization. At the same time, the revolutionists must develop political work within the bourgeois army, trying to win the soldiers and noncommissioned officers over to the camp of the proletariat. Revolutionary propaganda must be combined with agitation on the immediate demands of the soldiers and noncommissioned officers (democratic rights, living conditions, etc.). Obviously, there can be no illusions about the results of this work; the political and military disintegration of the bourgeois army will only be achieved if it has to confront the armed forces of the proletariat. b. A generalized confrontation resulting from a military offensive of the bourgeois army and the masses' resistance to it, or imperialist military intervention after a partial victory of the masses or the conquest of power, provides the occasion for unifying the revolutionary armed units at a higher level, where they will assume the character of a standing force not tied to the places of production that were previously the theater of activity for the militias.
The combination of detachments of the party and the workers and peasants militias constitutes the point of departure for the mass Revolutionary Army. The Revolutionary Army acquires its fullest expression in the context of a generalized civil war. Dual power in the political and social arenas is complemented by geographic and military dual power.
The concept of the Revolutionary Army is thus closely linked with the concept of the revolutionary crisis, civil war, and mass mobilizations. It is not an army that suddenly appears at the wave of a magic wand at any moment, or which develops by itself.
14. The POR supports unity of action among the parties and currents struggling against the military dictatorships and imperialism. But parties and currents of the bourgeoisie, which have no other perspective than to replace the dictatorship while maintaining the dominance of the bourgeoisie, have no place in this front. After August 21, the united front, formed in practice in the military action under-taken that day by the parties of the Bolivian left, was projected organizationally in the FRA. The FRA indicated the possibility of continuing the struggle. But the FRA became paralyzed and divided when it set about discussing the real and concrete organization of the confrontation with the dictatorship. Today, it has been replaced by other, partial fronts with a nationalist, bourgeois-democratic content, in which the POR cannot participate.
In any event, the problem of unity and the united front continues to be posed. The masses feel the necessity for it. The POR must take hold of this sentiment and work to bring together the worker and peasant masses in a united front, provided that this front is capable of carrying out effective actions and is not confined to sterile denunciations. For united action against government interference in the workers movement and the limitations the dictatorship imposes on that movement. For united action to ensure that the COB can operate and to free the prisoners. For a united front for concrete objectives.
Unity can also develop around military activity. In the event that some organizations carry out armed actions, the POR could succeed in developing united actions on the operational level, on condition that there were cooperation among the forces engaged in working out the plans and providing the technical leadership of actions. And at the same time, along with this, it would maintain the party's strict political and organizational independence.
15. In the new rise of the workers movement in which the POR is participating, it puts forward a platform that combines, by means of a transitional program, minimum and immediate tasks of the masses with the maximum objectives. The fundamental points of such a program are: 1. A general wage increase to counter the devaluation of the currency that is impoverishing wage-earners. For a sliding scale of wages to defend the standard of living of the masses.
Rehire workers laid off because of their politics or support for social struggles; jobs for the unemployed. Continuous mobilization of the unemployed organizations in alliance with the trade unions. For a struggle against the continual rise in prices. Let the currency devaluations bepaid for by private firms and the state, and not out of the miserable savings of the people.
2. Against imperialist pillage, for defense of state ownership of natural resources. For defense of oil, gas, and iron resources. Defend the COMIBOL and the nationalized mines that the fascist regime threatens to surrender to the voracious imperialists. For the return of workers control with right of veto, through establishment of workers control committees. Nationalize imperialist firms under workers control. Against the penetration of Brazilian sub-imperialism in the Departments of Santa Cruz and Beni. For relentless, militant opposition to the breakup of the country being promoted by the agrarian-industrial bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz. Kick Yankee imperialism and Brazilian sub-imperialism out of Bolivia. 3. Defense of the Bolivian workers' trade-union movement. For the right of the COB, the national union federations, and the local unions to function freely and independently. Kick the police, the army, and the fascist armed gangs out of the working-class centers.
For defense of democratic rights and freedoms. Freedom for all the political and trade-union prisoners. Close the concentration camps and private prisons.* Free the universities from the fascist grip. For reconquest of university autonomy, abolition of Bolivia's university statute, for full self-management of the universities by boards that represent both the students and the teaching staffs. 4. Defend the peasantry and its rights to the land that it works. Defend its right to primary, secondary, and technical education. Kick the regiments occupying the regional centers and oppressing the farm workers out of the countryside. For state aid to settlers including technical assistance. Guaranteed prices for their crops, credit and discounts in buying their tools and machinery. Increase the size of the poor peasants' plots by dividing up the re maining latifundia and the reserve lands of the former landlords. Encourage voluntary cooperatives with state aid.
5. For the defeat of Banzer. For that, we must organize the arming of the masses. Struggle for a revival of the workers militias and the peasant regiments. Centralize military leadership, training, and armament, in a workers military general staff.
However, it is not enough to defeat the dictatorship only to replace it with a bourgeois government that has a liberal face. What is needed is to promote development of a new power that will carry on the experience of the Popular Assembly but rise above limitations and The term "private prisons" is used to de scribe the houses that the FSB and the MNR have on their own transformed into torture chambers and places for confining and executing revolutionists. They have done this independently of the police and army, which have no control over these establishments. the weaknesses of that body in 1971. This new power should be enriched by a democratic way of operating. It should be closely linked to the rank-and-file workers and include a broad peasant representation. It should be independent of the bourgeois regime and rely on the armed force of the proletariat. The COB and the parties of the left should convene a Popular Assembly.
For a workers and peasants government, as the political expression of the rule of the oppressed masses led by the proletariat— the only way to liquidate capitalist and imperialist exploitation. 16. To initiate and apply this program, a party is needed. But to fulfill this role, the POR must strengthen itself and rise to the level of the tasks just outlined. The lack of development of the POR has be come an obstacle for the advancement of the revolution.
The POR has, throughout its history, been able to maintain its roots in the workers and peasant movement. But it has also revealed its weaknesses; and if it does not overcome them, it will be unable to become the effective instrument that the masses need in order to win. This poses the necessity for it to transform itself qualitatively and quantitatively, by inserting itself more deeply into the country's key sectors, by broadening its national leadership teams, and by extending its body of intermediary cadres. Of vital importance is the strengthening of its leadership center, which has the responsibility of planning all its activities, making maximum use of the capacities of its cadres, setting priorities, and concentrating its forces on the key axes of its activity as dictated by each period. This party center will be all the more capable and effective to the degree that it is closely linked with the International center.
The POR will have to improve its infrastructure, which revealed its weakness in the events of August 1971. It will have to improve its means of communication and propaganda and regularize its press and its publications. The party must recruit its members through an aggressive struggle against reformism in all its forms, a struggle that must be waged politically and through militant initiatives, always standing before the masses as the real and reliable alternative.