The United Secretariat of the Fourth International announces that the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario — Revolutionary Workers party, the Bolivian section of the Fourth International] suffered several dozen casualties in the struggle against the coup led by General Banzer and against the new military regime. Some fell on the field of battle; others were captured by the repressive forces and are in concentration camps. The repression has also fallen heavily on other organizations operating in the name of the working class. Backed by American imperialism and its agents in other Latin American countries, the "gorillas" in power are preparing to organize the most systematic and savage kind of extermination campaign. The Bolivian proletariat has experienced a long series of barbaric massacres in its history. Once again this threat hangs over its head, and more than ever it deserves international solidarity.
The POR comrades understood perfectly well that a test of strength was inevitable in the near future. Since they took a realistic view of the relationship of forces, in the military field above all, they had no illusions about the outcome. They made a considerable effort to prepare themselves for the coming test, scoring important gains in every arena. But these exertions could not counterbalance the negative weight of the political and military deficiencies which persisted at the mass level as a consequence of the lack of any real strategy for seizing power and waging armed struggle on the part of most of the organizations claiming to be socialist. At best, these organizations did not go beyond a spontanéist concept of insurrection.
Nonetheless, in face of the rightist coup d'etat and the mass mobilization, especially in La Paz and Santa Cruz, our comrades did not hesitate an instant. Their duty was to participate in the struggles with the forces they had at their disposal. And so they marched together with their class brothers, in the front ranks. Tomás Chambi, leader of the Independent Peasant Federation, fell in La Paz, along with about fifteen of his comrades. In Santa Cruz, where the counterrevolutionary assault was particularly fierce, twenty comrades were killed; and wounded or missing POR members have yet to be accounted for. Comrades have been arrested in La Paz, Santa Cruz, and Oruro. They are now being held, along with all the other victims of the repression, in the prisons and concentration camps in the tropical jungle, including the one at Madidi, where conditions are reported to be particularly revolting.
Finally, leading comrades who survived and had begun the task of reorganizing the movement barely escaped capture by taking refuge in the embassy of a Latin American country (after being turned back by several other embassies), and are now in exile.
The POR comrades have written us as follows:
"We are determined to continue our struggle and are in a more promising position than in the past. Our forces have increased in the recent period and new leading cadres have emerged. They are already at work. We are most encouraged by the confidence that vanguard sectors have expressed in us. This does not mean that we do not find ourselves in a difficult position. But revolutionists cannot expect the bourgeoisie to clear the way for them. Now, we must fight and we will fight. We prepared ourselves with such a perspective in mind."
The United Secretariat of the Fourth International pays homage to the hundreds of workers, peasants, and students massacred in the tragic days of August 1971. It pays homage to the Trotskyist militants who fell, in their own words, with their "thoughts on the party and the International." The United Secretariat expresses its fraternal solidarity with all those suffering in the prisons and the concentration camps, who must be snatched from their hangmen by an international campaign against the repression.
Long live the Bolivian working class! Long live the POR! Long live the Fourth International!