The "social truce" ends
Faced with the growth of massive strikes and protests in the summer and early fall of 1982, the Bolivian military regime was program and appealed to the masses for a hundred-day "truce"
obliged to agree to hand over power to a civilian government to allow it to restore order in the economy. The hundred days in order to avert an uncontrollable explosion.
installation of the new goverment in early October, On January 9, the UDP government suffered a major split,
Major figures are now in exile with the departure of the MIR, following results: 1) increased inflation, four octopuses that feed on the national in Bolivia
On November
Following the
5, the UDP cabinet an austerity the most right-wing compocharged with smuggling, involvement in drug traffic, and other nent of the coalition, even though it is led by former guerrillas.
criminal offenses.
It is widely believed in the Bolivian left that the MIR is aiming
The military handed the government over to the major elecfor a government of national unity including the right-wing force in the country, the Union Democratica parties, the PCN and the ADN of the former military dictator
(UDP), a front whose major components are the MNR-I of Siles as the so-called "Historic" faction of the the left-wing of the old bourgeois national movement put in power by the revolution of 1952, and the PCB, the cooperating with the Banzer dictatorship.
Bolivian Communist Party.
are the faction that collaborated.
The following is an assessment of the first hundred days
The form that the transter took was an ambiguous one. The
National Assembly suspended by the military was called back of the UDP government and the tasks it poses for revolution-
This body, based on the elections held before the ists by the Political Bureau of the Partido Obrero Revoluciohas a right-wing majority, the same time, the exe-
- Combate (Revolutionary Workers Party - Combat), step with the mood in the country.
the Bolivian section of the Fourth International.
ment has been edited somewhat for an international audience.
cutive branch was handed over to a UP government.
On November 5, less than a month after the UDP government took office, it adopted economic measures that claimed were necessary and in the interests of the people.
They were, the UDP said, part of a "New Economic Policy."
This term reflects an attempt by the UDP to compare the present capitalist crisis of the Bolivian bourgeois state with the economic crisis of the Soviet workers state
Before November 5, the increase in the
Wages remained stationary, and this rapid rate of inflation and speculation reduced their buying power to
The annual income of the state had stabilized around 900 million dollars, of which 600 million had to go for interest and retirement of the foreign
The remainder, 300 million dollars, was all that was left to meet the needs of the national economy.
In fact, the state's coffers were
Central Bank had no foreign currency
The military had decided to let the peso float against the dollar, which led profits for the exporting and bankrupcy for small local
This in turn led to increased and underemployment, impoverishment of the masses, and the of the national currency.
The price of imported products, including
It is important to point out that
80% of the key enterprises of the national economy are in the hands of the state, and, with the exception of the Huanuni mine, they were all bankrupt.
THE EFFECTS OF THE UDP'S ECONOMIC MEASURES
Of all the measures adopted by the UDP government on November 5, only those involving currency control by the Central Bank and the establishment of a fixed rate of exchange for the peso could be considered to have any positive
But even these decrees were far from adequate. In fact, while the dollar was set at 200 pesos, the internal demand was so high that in a few days the rate of exchange reached 400 to one.
With the exception of the currencycontrol measure, all the steps taken by government very much resembled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) tried to impose while the military dictatorship was still in power. But the dictatorship was not able to apply them out of fear of the reaction of the masses. Priority was given to foreign trade, to the middle-sized mining corporations (the private mines), to the sector in the eastern part of the country, the private banks, and all those sectors that bring in foreign currency so as to enable the state to meet the interest and principal payments on
These priorities were set to the detriment of the statized sectors, which will increase unemployment and stifle the small-scale industry working for the local market. All this, in fact, amounts to a typical monetarist policy to guarantee the interests of imperialist capital.
Thus, the UDP government, in which the masses have placed their hopes, has done what the military government did not dare to. This policy has had the
In fact, the MR split over the issue of
"Historicos" combined with a fall in the value of the peso, which, together, has led to an inflation rate of 1,500%; a 13% increase in unemployment; a monthly minimum wage of 8,490 pesos, which corresponds to the expenses of a family of five for only a week and a half; and, finally, the threat a new devaluation of the peso in the near future. It is clear that the bulk of the state sector is still sinking into bankruptcy, along with private nonexporting industry. It is clear also that the subordination of the national economy to U.S. and West European imperialist capital is reaching a crucial especially since the country no longer has any reserve capital.
mitigating the economic the UDP government has aggravated it, and shifted its weight still more onto the shoulders of the workers, the urban masses, and the poor peasants. Now, plunged into a political crisis, the UDP government is trying to rectify its earlier economic measures by carrying out new devaluations and setting the minimum wage at a miserable level, just high enough to slow down workers struggles. Another such measure is establishworkers comanagement of the statized enterprises. But in every respect the UDP government is continuing to follow the road of subordination to imperialist capital and the lines laid down by the
With its attempts to make mitigating adjustments in its austerity policy, the UDP will succeed only in increasing hunger and unemployment of the country to imperialist capital, increasing foreign debt, and enriching the
economy. (i.e., the native bourgeoisie, the landlords, the military, and the imperialists). It will succeed only in increasing sacrifices and austerity measures imposed on the workers, and, as a result, in accelarating the process of social decay. This will necessarily involve a polarization of the social forces, the isolation of the government from the masses, and a strengthening of the reactionary right. In fact, the right is seeking not only to improve its opportunities for lining its pockets, but to assure its possibilities for enrichment by regaining political power. This is why the reactionary right is plotting against the government and is bound to move toward a coup d'etat.
THE DILEMMA OF THE UDP one. But the MIR and the reactionary right wanted a parliamentary solution. We, the PCB, and even the MNR-I insisted on the need for elections, despite the time that was lost. Elections would have made it possible to push back the right, to defeat it on the electoral level as well as in the streets. It is true that the masses cannot eat ballots, and, as the MIR demagogically said, that the hungry cannot wait. But what we wanted to do was to push the democratization process to the maximum, since the political and social relationship of forces was extremely favorable to the left and to the UDP.
In this situation, the UDP would have been able to gain an absolute majority in parliament and at all levels of government. This would have encouraged and emboldened the masses and obliged where the army serves as the policeman for imperialist interests, a bourgeois democratic regime based on class collaboration cannot last for long. Political and social confrontation is on the agenda. Thus, at the end of 1982, the first fissure appeared in the government and in the UDP itself, with the departure of the MIR from the government.
The MIR's aim is to get a government of "national unity," including the UDP, private enterprise, the army, and the reactionary right organized in the ADN, the MR-H, and the PDC. It wants a policy of rapprochement with U.S. imperialism and the European bourgeois governments in order to contain the revolutionary upsurge of the masses and reconsolidate the bourgeois state. For these objectives, they are using the fight against the
GOVERNMENT
Mismanagement by the reactionary alterego left the UDP a totally bankrupt economy. But the UDP reactionary sectors in the army, and to tion.
was also left with the job of containing international re-itical or the movement of the workers poor masses, which was threatening to overflow and break down the retaining based on the existing parliament. Today, departure from the government is now walls of capitalism. It was not the UDP that won this democratic opening, but the poor masses in their heroic struggle, which began with the strike of
Huanuni miners in November 1981, and spread throughout continued to country until it inflicted a decisive political defeat on the military dictatorship.
However, it is important to see, as the masses do, the difference between a fascistic regime with a dictatorial orientation and a bourgeois democratic
The masses feel this difference the new UDP government to take measures against the oligarchy, to take on the paramilitary gangs, to push back the defeat the right in parliament.
All domestic and actionary forces combined ly to stop elections and impose a solution there is a right-wing majority in parliament, and the UP government remains confined to the executive branch, without any real decision making power. But the masses have already gone beyond that phase of the struggle. That is, now that the UDP has revealed its antipopular character and its line, the fact that it lacks an absolute majority in parliament is hardly important anymore.
FISSURES IN THE GOVERNMENT paramilitary gangs and the drug traffic as a cover; they have no intention whatever of promoting any mass mobiliza-
The UDP has no clearly defined poleconomic positions on either the national or international level. 13-day crisis touched off by the MIR's combining with the row started up by government's the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which provoked a strong reaction from
However, the PCB does not want to leave the goverament. It is hanging on to its place in the cabinet by tooth and
Because this position offers opportunities in two areas that are decisive for its reformist policy - working in a class-collaborationist one.
acutely. We do also. But while we place no real hope in the UDP government, we of its own decay within it, since it is a interested in getting the PCB out of the do have confidence in the capacity of the masses for struggle. So, it should be clear that we will support all "democratic and anti-imperialist measures, all measures in the interest of the people"
taken by the UDP government.
the people to maintain
What is more, the UDP bore the seeds class-collaboration front. In a country where there is a native bourgeoisie that is organized and differentiated as a class, where the national economy is totally subordinate to imperialism, where there are oligarchic strata controlling the labor movement.
Both the MIR and the Americans are government. This is not because they fear that PCB will push a radical policy; this party has no such intention. What they want to do is to quiet the fears of a backward, oligarchical bourgeoisie.
as well as the Americans call on finance capital, and the West European Social Democrats, their political in independence trade-union activity so that they can the struggle for their own continue demands and historical objectives.
From October 10 to November 5, it can be said that, to a certain extent, the their guard, waiting to masses lowered see what the UDP government's measures
UN P would be. However, it took no step in the interests of the people or against the imperialists. And, in fact, the pro-imperialist measures it finally adopted were a brutal disillusionment for the
It is important for working people.
CIDRIR the masses to go through this experience so that they can see through the
"anti-imperialist and populist masque"
of this government.
A ONE-LEGGED GOVERNMENT government has arisen as the
This result of pressure and a political deal.
We warned that a government set up by the parliament would be a one-legged
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linked to international IPODE UNR
know that it is better to keep an old toothless hound dog in the kitchen and fed it on scraps, than have it running around outside raising a howl. is what the myopically anti-Communist local bourgeoisie and oligarchy stubbornly refuse to see.
The departure of the MIR from the government had two effects:
It swelled the ranks of the right. It put the UDP government on a short leash, with narrowing mass support.
THE THREAT OF A COUP
It is no accident that the MIR has one the masses elected, government of national unity It is no accident that the reactionary right in parliament has begun a barrage of challenges to various UDP
It is not an accident that the reaction is denouncing this government a total disaster and calling on the people
Nor is it by chance that at the end of December, representatives of the ADN, of the MNR-H, of private enterprise, of the MIR, the truckers, and the military met at Tarija. They are plotting against the government, preparing to isolate it and overthrow it.
The government is on the defensive. It can only be saved temporarily if the masses shore it up. But it cannot appeal to them because it itself represents the native bourgeoisie and not the workers.
We think that this government cannot survive long. What the right proposes to do is already public. It is going to mount economic boycott, boycott the government, and create a general economic and political crisis in order to get parliament to intervene and name a right-wing government headed by Victor Paz Estenssoro and Jaime Paz Zamora (MNR-H and MIR), supported by their colleagues in the ADN, the PDC, private enterprise,
The relative demobilization of the masses that resulted from hopes being placed in the UDP government and from an acceptance of the 100-day period of grace that the government asked for is now beginning to overcome. Up till now, all labor organizations in the country for a minimum wage of 40,000 pesos a month backed up with a of automatic cost-of-living
There is a very wide-ranging sion in the workers movement over the
Some sectors accept it; others reject it categorically.
called for a majority comanagement boards statized enterprises, along with collective workers control with the right of veto in the discussion in the unions gram of demands to deal with the economic crisis in order to open up the way for mobilizing the workers, peasants, and the poor masses in general to defend deepen the democratic process, to strengthen the mass organizations, and enable the Bolivian Confederation of Trade Unions (COB) to play an independent role leading the mass movement.
### MASS SELF-DEFENCE
Today there is a noticeable upturn in the mobilization of the workers and the poor masses. Factory occupations are being carried out to counter the congresses are being held where alternatives in the interests of the people are being disuessed, as well as methods of struggle and organization. All this is focused on combating the economic crisis and confronting counteroffensive of the right in parliament and in the army. This is the reason organization and people's self-defence are so important.
and the aspirations of the masses, it is clear that we are heading for a political confrontation in short order, which could even take the form of armed clashes. The masses are going to defend the democratic process. They are going to fight for decent living conditions, decent working conditions, and a living wage, for a genuinely democratic and revolutionary solution, for a government of their own.
Our party supports such a perspective. Undoubtedly, the UDP government is part of the democratic process that we and so forth.
This will be a cold coup, of course, but still a coup. It will lead to a cutting back of democratic freedoms, a shifting of the process to the right, a revival of the • cial struggle. If the and a blocking of the mass upsurge.
In the new period opened up by the
"100 days"
on February
16, there is no doubt that there will be gap grows betw
'he UDP government are determined to deepen. But in fighting for this, we are not defending the bourgeois government but rather the gains of the masses. The main enemy at the moment is not the UDP government but the reaction entrenched in parliament and the army. In fact, it is these reactionaries American imperialism and the European Social Democracy.
THE LEFT ALTERNATIVE AND
REVOLUTIONARY MASS
A.R.COMBAT
Vive PREAD de HAYE
¿ DRERNICENOS LA RESISTENCIR POPUL
CONTRA EL FASCISNO! VENCERE
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### LEADERSHIP
The only national political pole of attraction to the left of the UDP is the Partido Socialista-Uno. The POR-C cannot be that at present because it is still only a relatively small party, not really organized on the national level. We are, however, the only revolutionary Marxist current with a perspective for growth in the coming period since other small revolutionary groups have begun to fade away. We are, of course, trying to extend a hand to these groups and
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draw them together in a single revolutionary current.
this is not sufficient to of the moment We need a broader policy of alliances, one that can draw in revolutionary and progressive tors, authentically democratic sectors, sections of the population interested in consolidating and deepening democratic
This is why we are calling on these forces to confront the main enemy, and, for that purpose, to build a democratic political-military leadership. Such a mass leadership can only be built on the basis of a revolutionary and democratic program bringing together the genuinely democratic and revolutionary the unions, and the progressive institutions. The only form it take is a Revolutionary People's
The PS-Uno lacks both organization and a clearly defined policy. Therefore, it cannot develop as an alternative political leadership for the mass movement. If it overcame these deficiencies, the PS-Uno might manage to focus the radicalized consciousness and determination to fight of the working masses, and become a mass leadership.
However, as of now that is not the case. In middle-class areas, where there have been elections, the PS-Uno has scored smashing victories, gaining from the backlash against the UDP. But it has not gone any further. Throughout a period filled with social struggles, it has not called for any mobilizations, demonstrations, or rallies. It has sat on its hands, doing nothing more than make statements about rarified political and technical questions without linking these to the fundamental problems of the country, or appealing directly to the masses, or clarifying its position toward the government, the state, the economic THE SECTARIANISM OF THE PS-Uno
We maintain a completely collaborative attitude toward the PS-Uno. We support it, or mobilize side by side with it, to confront the right or gain ground from the UDP. But the PS-Uno accepts unity only on a temporary basis, to win elections. It does not have a united-front strategy.
At the militant Huanuni mine, the PS-Uno took a wrong, step, running a purely party slate. Out of the 1,800 votes cast (the total workforce is 2,200), it got only 57 votes. in alliance with dissident Maoists, won an absolute majority, defeating the UDP and the official Maoists.
The UDP and the parties that make it up not maintaining monolithic unity in all areas of mass work. Thus, there are openings for achieving limited agreements with radicalized sections of these parties. For example, in the easter part of the country, the MNR-I has a militant base among the peasants and the poor masses. So, this offers a possibility for making alliances with it on certain occasions against the right bloc. In the universities, we form united fronts with the MIR and the PCB, or with other independent and revolutionary groups. All of this is done in the framework of a tactic of building united mobilizations against the common enemy.
HE PROCESS O ELF.ORGANI A IO.
selfo the matism is bet, the promis on
The factory occupations have given rise to factory committees or strike committees. The economic crisis is giving impetus to the development of Committees to Defend the People's Economy (CODEP), which the MIR is trying to control from the office of the vice presidency, which it holds. But there are still no independent mass organs of selforganization. In some areas, neighborhood committees play a role in assuring supplies and services. But such committees have not become a general phenomenon in the cities where they exist, nor have they developed on a national scale. So far it has been the unions, the departmental (district) union structures and the COB, that have been playing the main role. But we have not yet reached a stage of political development higher than the peak reached last October. That is why there are still no structures of mass selforganization other than the unions.
This is still a period of ferment, of discussion, of learning, but the processes that are beginning now will be extremely important in the big confrontations that are looming on the horizon and which may be extremely dramatic.
ARTICLES ALREADY PUBLISHED
IN INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT
- General Strike Rocks Bolivia, by Fernando Zamora, No 5, 26 April 1982.
- Prerevolutionary Crisis Looms in Bolivia, by IV, No 16, 1 November 1982.
- Interview with Bolivian Indian Leaders, by IV, No 17, 15 November 1982.
The Radicalization of Bolivian Peasantry, by S. Romande, No 17, 15 November 1982.
- The Bolivian Cauldron, by S. Romande, No 23, 24 January 1983
VIANA
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Bolivian miners elect union leaders (DR)
of the masses and wiping out their gains in a single blow. In the immediate future, it seems more likely that bourgeoisie and the imperialists will go for a cold coup than for a hot one.
The masses have just gone through the experience of a criminal, despotic, bloody, and barbaric dictatorship. They are not disorganized, and in fact are developing self-organization. A violent coup would run straight up against a mass response and would threaten to unleash a mass counteroffensive that could seriously endanger the bourgeois state. The COB leadership could be bypassed by the combativity of the insurgent masses and the actions of the small revolutionary parties, whose authority might rapidly grow.
The right prefers a cold coup. But the kind of coup the reactionaries have in mind does not resemble the traditional scenario of rebellions initiated on military bases — a dawn attack on the presidential palace, ouster and exile of the president. This time, they are talking about three things - an economic and political boycott, forcing the president to resign, and getting the parliament representing 'a broad national agreement' to appoint Paz Estenssoro (of the MNR-H) as president and Paz Zamora (of the MIR) as vice president.
We are calling on the masses and their parties to defend the people's rights and to organize people's self-defense.
Q. How did the POR-C come through the change from clandestine to legal work?