The main text here has NOT been proofed, take the text from New International. But I have added in all the note numbers and marked them in red to make it easier to see. I HAVE proofed The Notes.

I do not know how much Spaniards nowadays insist on these accents, some of them they certainly do but I do not know which! Al Richardson, our editor was most scrupulous about things like that and they are certainly correct.

Ted Crawford

REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY, VOLUME 4, NO 3 3

Juan Robles

Trotskyism in Bolivia

The article below is intended to serve as an introduction to what follows, and first appeared in New International, (Volume 13, no 9, December 1947, pp282-5), the theoretical journal of the Workers Party of the USA, led by Max Shachtman, which split away from the Socialist Workers Party, the US Trotskyist group, in 1940. It is part of a series of reports written from different parts of Latin America which appeared mainly in the Workers Party newspaper, Labor Action, with increasing regularity during the late 1940s and early 1950s over the pseudonyms of 'Juan Robles' and 'Juan Rey'. Why the author saw fit to change his pen name is not at all clear, any more than his real identity. But it is almost certain that he was the Peruvian Trotskyist Emilio Adolfo Westfallen (Bestfalling), a founder of the GOM, which changed its name to the POR (Peru) in 1947, who was a supporter of Shachtman. The article was translated from Spanish by Abe Stein.

The material printed in Labor Action shows that his informant in Bolivia during the 1940s had been a supporter of the Bolivian Socialist Workers Party (PSOB), a split from the POR led by Tristan Marof in 1938, which, to begin with, had four parliamentary seats and considerable trade union support, but which by the mid-1940s had lost most of its influence because Marof had accepted office under President Hertzog. According to Lora, the PSOB was only able to bring out its paper at this time due to financial assistance from the United States, and this may explain why Rey/Robles is anxious to prove that the POR's own alliance with the MNR (Revolu­tionary Nationalist Movement) was with a Fascist party (on the basis that the MNR gave its support to an attempt by Argentina to form a general organisation of Latin American trade unions on a Peronist basis), a charge rebutted in the American Militant of 21 October 1949.

Whatever the motive of Robles/Rey's informant, we print this account here because it sets the scene for the drama of 1952 and introduces us to the main participants, apart from its remarkable prophecy that any alliance between the POR and the MNR could only result in a military dictatorship in the long run.

Political Tendencies Following the General Strike

Three currents can be distinguished in post-revolutionary Bolivian politics: 1. The clearly defined current working for the economic and politi‑

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cal restoration of the feudo-bourgeoisie, represented by the Repub­lican Union, at whose head stands Bolivia's President, Dr Hertzog.[1]

2. The Stalinist current, calling for national unity and demonstrating it in the nature of its leadership, Guachalla (ex-ambassador to the United States) and Arze (Stalinist leader).[2] The programme of this current is also economic restoration for the feudo-bourgeoisie dis­guised as the 'bourgeois revolution'. This tendency was supported by a section of the mine owning bourgeoisie (Aramayo-Hochschild),[3] by the middle class and the petit-bourgeoisie, the artisans, and the back­ward layers of the working class.

3. Finally, there is the current of the rebellious proletariat, which is quite complex in character, and is burdened by certain traditional leftovers and nationalist impurities. Its programme is the democratic revolution as the road toward Socialism. This current was represented by the mining proletariat, by the Marxist intellectuals, and by rebellions sections of progressive white collar workers (bank employees). Politi­cally, it is represented by the POR (Revolutionary Workers Party), the official Bolivian Section of the Fourth International, by the miners' trade union and by the Miners' Parliamentary Bloc. [4]

Although Bolivia is a backward, semi-feudal and semi-colonial country, these three currents can be distinguished with sufficient clar­ity, revealing in embryonic form the problems and contradictions of the future Socialist revolution in the South American continent. By virtue of its one-sided economic development, its backward social structure, and its political dependence, the social and political contradictions are more advanced and take on a greater clarity of outline in Bolivia than in the neighbouring countries, providing Marxist theory with a great many lessons.

Rôle of the Stalinists

In the first period, Stalinism appeared to be the main opponent of the feudo-bourgeois current. Allied with bourgeois liberalism' and lead­ing the petit-bourgeoisie, it almost won the national elections under the banner of 'National Unity'. Its `progressive' and `democratic' slo­gan, the 'bourgeois revolution', won over a part of the proletariat. It seemed as if the Bonapartist tendency was about to find its instrument in the Stalinist party. However, international developments, North American pressure, the massacre of the workers in Potosf directed by the Stalinists, [5] and the political action of the Trotskyists, underlined the decay and political defeat of Stalinism. The bourgeois right formed a cabinet of 'national unity' with the Stalinists. This, above all, was the final step leading to the political defeat of the latter.

The mine owning bourgeoisie expected the PIR (the Stalinist Party of the Revolutionary Left) to defeat the mineworkers, that is, theminers' union, the POR (Trotskyists), and the Miners' Parliamentary Bloc (Trotskyists and mine unionists). But without having political power in their hands, the Stalinists were incapable of carrying out the tasks assigned to them by the Patirio [6] mining interests. They could not disarm the workers and hand them over to the bourgeoisie. After the Catavi strike,[7] the largest mine centre owned by Patirio (the tin king), the PIR ministers, criticised by the bourgeoisie and the workers, lost the battle for their party. Before betraying the proletariat, they had handed the native peasants over to the bourgeoisie, thus betraying the programme of the bourgeois revolution. The cabinet of national unity was dissolved.

Previously divided into a rightist majority and a Stalinist minority, the bourgeoisie now united against the working class and the Stalinists, forming a cabinet of the Republican Union. The bourgeois revolution proposed by the PIR in alliance with the 'progressive' bourgeois evap­orated, leaving as its only heir a native brand of Bonapartism. The bourgeoisie chose its own purely bourgeois variety of Bonapartism instead of the Stalinist type. The native Bonapartist programme is realistic and concrete:

`Down with revolutionary dreams! Down with the bourgeois revolu­fion! We must restore mine production, and rince the real price of tin has fallen we must lower wages and force the workers to greater productivity.'

In a word, economic restoration at the cost of the proletariat. As for the countryside, an end to experiments and novelties. For the Indians who ask for the division of the land and the abolition of servitude, a raie of blows and massacre.

From a political point of view it is a `strong' government against the workers and native peasants, but democratic toward the bourgeoisie itself. It is a Bonapartist government in a permanent state of siege, covered by the figleaf of a servile and domesticated parliament. After a short period of activity in the government, the Stalinists capitulated to this programme, demonstrating their exhaustion and preparing their decline. Confident that this capitulation would take place, the bour­geoisie launched its attack upon the proletariat in order to realise its programme.

After the Stalinist capitulation, the only force remaining as an effective obstacle to the native bourgeois and Bonapartist programme of economic restoration was the mining proletariat. The Patirio mine owners declared that it was necessary to fire the rebellious workers, and hire new and more docile ones. The government supported this programme, which was directed against the miners' union, and ordered troops into the mining districts. The appointment of the new Minister

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of Defence, Zilvetti Arze, known as a butcher of the workers, the gravedigger for the Periaranda. government, involved in the famous massacre of Catavi, [8] appeared to the workers as an act of provocation. The Miners' Federation called a general strike in the mines supported by the whole working class.

Were the strike a success, the Hertzog government would inevitably fall. But the strike was not as successful as the Federation expected it would be. The urban workers did not support the strike with any degree of effectiveness. Of course, a workers' coordinating committee was created in which there participated the CSTB [9] (Federation of Bolivian Trade Unions, dominated by the Stalinists), the railway workers' feder­ation, also Stalinist dominated, the factory workers' federation, which is unaffiliated, and the bank employees' union, and many other minor unions (bakery, construction, carpenters, etc).

The Stalinists were in the committee only to obtain leadership of the organisation of the strike and then break it. The strike-breaking rôle of the Stalinists reveals their reactionary character, their servility before the bourgeoisie, and their fear and hatred of the independent workers' movement. When the transportation workers came out ag­ainst the strike, its fate was settled. Under these circumstances, the only group to keep the spark of resistance alive in La Paz was the bank employees' union, which the government feared more than the work­ers' strike. The government was unable to make arrests in this strike because involved was a question of members of the middle class!

The Meaning of the Strike

The strike of the factory workers was broken by the attitude of the Stalinists; and the government proceeded energetically to the arrest of the Secretary General of the factory workers' union, Quiros, thereby beheading the strike. In addition, the strike was only partially success­ful in the mining centres. Although the Stalinists could not break the spirit of the miners' independent union, the combined pressure of the Stalinists and the Republican Union party weakened the union, fright­ening and corrupting the more backward and vacillating layers of mine workers. The government knew how to mobilise not only its agents among the proletariat, but its middle class organisations as well, the so-called `revolutionary leagues' who covered the walls with such slogans as 'clown with the strike', and `death to Lechin [10] (Secretary of the miners' union).

The state of siege proclaimed by parliament fmished off the strike of the bank employees. The Stalinists voted for the state of siege in parliament. Only the eight votes of the Miners' Parliamentary Bloc were cast in opposition. The Bonapartist regime triumphed, and since it was a native and not a Stalinist Bonapartism, the Stalinists crawledon their bellies begging the tolerance of the latter. The President promis' ed this tolerance on the condition that they would be `well-be­haved children'. Now the right wing has an almost open road in realising its programme of national `economic restoration' at the colt of the workers and peasants, in the first place at the expense of the exhausted mine workers.

After their attempt to realise the bourgeois revolution by massacr­ing the workers and tolerating the slaughter of the peasants, [11] the Stalinists are also accepting this solution. It is certain that they are following this course in agreement with the instructions of the Chilean Communist Party in order to `survive' [12] and fulfil the role of Stalin's firth column in the future international conflict.

As for the Bolivian feudo-bourgeoisie, it is now worthy of the trust and confidence of Per6n [13] as well as of the United States. It is many years since so strong and consolidated a govemment existed in Bolivia. It is a Bonapartist government with parliamentary trappings, with a `domesticated' congress that voluntarily submitted to the 'state of siege' with its own resolution as `representatives of the nation', the almost majority Stalinist party being an accomplice to the act.

Although the mining proletariat has not been massacred, nor its parliamentary representation arrested, it has been politically defeated because of the bad organisation of the strike and the accusation that it acted under the instigation of the defeated Nazi-Fascist regime. [14] The middle class is convinced that the mine workers' strikes threaten its existence and 'standard of life'. The public employee trembles for the government budget, threatened by the decrease in mine exports. The proletariat is completely isolated, fast of ail from the peasants who were massacred in front of everybody's eyes, including the workers', and secondly from the middle class. In this respect the termination of the bank employees' strike was somewhat symbolic.

To attribute the defeat to the lack of organisation and the weakness of the Bolivian proletariat would be somewhat old-fashioned, idealistic and scholastic. The roots are more profound and go back to ideological and theoretical sources.

According to the account of a member of the Central Committee of the POR (Revolutionary Workers Party), ideological reasons for the strike derive from the Argentine Trotskyist organ Octubre, whose errors have been subjected to criticism by Comrade Luis Velasco in his work on structural changes in Latin America. [15] This magazine, famous for its support of Perôn, considering him the realiser of the `bourgeois-democratic' revolution, not only in Argentina but in ail South America, attacked the Bolivian POR for vegetating in the shad­ow of the Bolivian right wing instead of allying itself with the defeated MNR (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement), [16] in order to embark on the road of the democratic revolution in Bolivia together with the

8 REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY, VOLUME 4, NO 3

revolutionary petit-bourgeoisie. This article was circulated extensively in Bolivia and had an almost dpcisive influence in launching the badly

organised and premature general strike against the government, which ended in strengthening the Bonapartist tendency.

How the Trotskyists Participated
The Secretary General of the mine workers' union, Lechfn, an ex-mem‑
ber of the MNR, who now vacillates between the position of the POR

and that of his past, or, more accurately, the political influence of his ex-friends, was generally impressed by this article and pushed the

declaration of the strike though the miners' union and the Miners' Parliamentary Bloc. The POR was dragged along by this tendency. The capitulation of the POR to the Octubre tendency was well prepared by

the theory of the `democratic revolution' as the immediate task in

Bolivia, possible without the aid of the international proletariat, which would include the taking of power by the POR and the Miners' Federation.

Exemplified in the pamphlet written by Lavalle and the parliamen­tary deputy, Lora, this theory separated itself from the position of the Peruvian Marxist theoretician, Marikegui, who clearly stated that the

Peruvian (or Bolivian) revolution would be Socialist and internation­al. [17] Lora considered Mariâtegui's point of view mistaken, and availed

himself of the terminology used in the Mexican review, Clave, which speaks of the `proletarian' revolution in order to avoid the contradiction between the terms `Socialise and `democratic', interpreting the proletarian revolution as democratic and not Socialist in character, which fulfils the unfinished tasks of the democratic revolution in passing.

This theoretical deviation prepared the adventuristic atmosphere in the POR, and facilitated the rôle of the MNR agents amongst the workers. They desired the defeat of the government at all costs, and hoped to waste the strength and driving power of the working class as well to bring about this defeat, and thus to climb to power on its back to incorporate their regime in Per6n's South American bloc. It is the judgement of the Octubre article that the South American petit-bour­geois of the Peronista type in Argentina, Aprista in Peru, [18] MNR in Bolivia, is revolutionary in character and therefore worthy of workers' support. This thesis found the soil well prepared in the Bolivian POR, according to my informant.

For varions reasons, the spontaneous character of the miners' movement being in first place, the rôle of the Fourth Internationalist party, was very limited. Because the party lacked hegemony over the movement, some POR members tried to lead the miners directly, permitting themselves to be dragged along at times by the elemental

REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY, VOLUME 4, NO 3 9

movement. The Miners' Parliamentary Bloc, which includes eight deputies and senators, is an amalgam of Trotskyists and trade unionists *ith a nationalist past. Only three deputies are members of the POR,

others are ex-nationalists. The limited rôle of the POR was quite ',vident in the strike; only the unions of secondary importance (bakery liforkers, construction workers, bank employees in part) followed the slogans of the Fourth Internationalist party; the others marched behind their union leaders, doubtful and ex-nationalist elements.

The strike ended with the victory ôf the right. And what if it had cnded in the victory of the miners? Would the POR have been capable of organising a workers' government and unleashing the democratic revolution? I am afraid not, and I am afraid it would have had to resort to the recommended alliance with the MNR elements, which would have obviously ended in a militaristic and nationalist government. This was the solution toward which the disreputable MNR elements marched in venturing on the road of the general strike.

The South American petit-bourgeois is not, as Octubre would have it, revolutionary. On the contrary, it is reactionary, capable only of installing a pseudo-Fascist or Bonapartist government, and is com­pletely incapable of setting the bourgeois revolution in motion. For this reason, any alliance with it, no matter how temporary, whether with the nationalist whig which sympathises with Per6n, or with its Stalinist wing, constitutes a grave error and a betrayal of the Socialist revolution and the proletariat.

The growth of Bolivian Trotskyism has been spontaneous, a super­cial product of economic and social contradictions, and of a political

(*don in the most backward South American country. It advanced Jurther than Trotskyism in the neighbouring countries and the interna­enalworking class movement. Hence its childlike and messianic faith Diu ho historie mission and ability to release a continental revolution

accomplish a democratic revolution in a single country. From the same causes sprang the necessity of making concessions to the nation­alist elements in the trade unions, and above all in the miners' union. Here too, we have the explanation for the exaggeration of trade union Influence, and the greater weight of the miners' representation over that of the Fourth Internationalist party, the POR.

Bolivian `PORism' is one of the most interesting phenomena in all South America. But its main weakness is its ideological backwardness, its faith in the possibility of the `democratic revolution' in a single country as backward as Bolivia. This explains its capitulation to the Octubre position, and its concessions to the remains of the defeated nationalist movement, the MNR.

However, the Bolivian section of the Fourth International is faithful to the conservative Fourth International majority. It repeats the slogan of the `unconditional defence' of the USSR, and continues to find

nourishment in the theory of the `objectively progressive' rôle of world Stalinism. Its centrist internationalist position turns out to be oppor­tunistic adventurism in national political activity. Its alliances and concessions to nationalism have been accompanied by instances of `United Fronts' with the Stalinists. It is a Trotskyism that is semi­Stalinist in its theory and activity, a limited movement tinged with disreputable provincials and nationalists. Its social base, the proletariat of the mines, is backward and is crushed by the terrible conditions of existence at an altitude of 4000 to 5000 metres. This proletariat lives in miserable hovels, is badly dressed and badly fed, suffers from the eternal cold, and is the victim of alcohol, which offers the only escape from this frightful existence.

Theory and ldeology

The Bolivian miners were Villarroelistas [19] and nationalists whom the defeated regime mobilised against the traditionai right with demagogic phrases and certain social gains. Now this proletariat has turned toward the POR in order to find support against the mining feudo­bourgeoisie. But this ideological turn is quite superficial. The factory and urban proletariat, like the entire industry of the country, is still in its swaddling clothes. The majority of the cadres of the POR are recruited from the middle class.

The Bolivian section of the Fourth International succeeded in becoming an independent political force which could face the united attack of the entire feudo-bourgeoisie and the Stalinists. Even the unsuccessful and badly prepared general strike demonstrated the relatively tremendous strength of this movement, and almost shook the bourgeois government to its foundations. If only we could see similar examples of such independent revolutionary attitudes in America and Europe, even including the risk of the errors and defeats of the Bolivian Trotskyists!

I believe that this sentence is the most positive judgement and defence against all negative and enemy criticism. The revolutionary development in Bolivia demonstrates the international possibilities of the revolutionary workers' movement and of Marxism. At the same time it exposes the dangers, errors and weaknesses involved. In order to conquer the errors and backwardness, it is necessary to turn in new directions. It is necessary to defeat conservatism, opportunism and the endless chewing over of the inheritance bequeathed us by Trotsky.

In Europe we cannot cut the cord which ties us to Stalinism. The majority of Trotskyist parties tend more and more toward becoming a left opposition to Stalinism. In South America an even greater danger is represented by the Peronista, Aprista, nationalist penetration of certain sections of the Trotskyist movement. In Europe, the official

1 0 REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY, VOLUME 4, NO 3

REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY, VOLUME 4, NO 3 11

Fourth Internationalists are fascinated by the 'bourgeois revolution' realised by Stalin in Eastern Europe. In South America they cannot free themselves of that fatal illusion, that will-o-the-wisp, the rata morgana of the `bourgeois revolution' of the revolutionary rôle of the utionalist petit-bourgeoisie. Both phenomena reflect the same prob­km: the ideological backwardness, the.conservatism, the pro-Stalinist reformism, or pro-nationalism of our movement.

If we are able to embark on a new road, if we are to form an itulependent revolutionary workers' movement, it is necessary to con­quer this backwardness and rearm with new weapons. The evil lies not le Bolivia nor in South America. The evil lies in the world leadership of the Fourth International.

Notes

1. Dr Enrique Hertzog (1896- ) was one of the founders of the Party of the Republican Socialist Union, a right wing bourgeois party, and President of Bolivia, 1947-49. He was succeeded by another right winger, Mamerto Urriolagoitia (1894- ), who was President until May 1951, when he handed over to a military administration under Hugo Ballivián (1901-) after he objected to the results of a Presidential election.

2. Guachalla, a Supreme Court judge, was the opponent of Hertzog in the 1947 elections. José Antonio Arze (1904-1955) was the leader of the Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, (PIR). The PIR, the Party of the Revolutionary Left, was a Popular Front organisation established by Stalinists in 1940. It attempted to join the government established when the Movimiento Nacionalista Revo­lucionario (note 16), and some army officers in the Razón de Patria (Radepa), a right wing masonic group, seized power in 1943, but its conditions for entry were rejected. Subsequently describing the MNR/Radepa government as `Fascist’, the PIR opposed it in the 1944 elections, played an important part in its overthrow by the military in July 1946, and joined a provisional government which took over. After putting forward its own candidate against Hertzog in 1947, the PIR took for a while cabinet seats in his government, then acted as a loyal opposition. All this, along with its rôle in the Potosí massacre (note 5) resulted in the PIR losing credibility within the working class. The Communist Party of Bolivia (PCB) was formed in January 1950, when some young dissidents broke from the PIR. The PIR was dissolved in July 1952, and another Communist Party was formed, which joined the PCB in December 1952.

3. Carlos Victor Aramayo (1889-) was a diplomat, financier and tin magnate, whose holdings were nationalised by the MNR in 1952. Maurició Hochschild (1881-1965) was an Austrian Jew who made a fortune dealing in metals in Bolivia and became

a tin magnate.

4. The Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (FSTMB), the Bolivian mineworkers' union federation, was formed in June 1944 at a conference held under the auspices of the MNR at Huanuni. The FSTMB and the POR set up the Frente Unico Proletario (FUP, United Workers Front) as an electoral bloc during the 1947 elections. It won seven scats in the chamber of deputies and two in the senate, and these became known as the Miners' Parliamentary Bloc.

5. On 28 January 1947 striking miners at Potosí were attacked by government troops. On the next day members of the PIR, who had been armed by the police, killed and wounded several more strikers.

6. Simón Ituri Patiño (1864-1947) was a diplomat and tin magnate, and one of the richest men in the world.

7. An occupation occurred in July 1947 at the Catavi mining comptes, which was owned by Patiño. The company sacked 7000 workers, and only rehired those whom it deemed `safe'. As this strike did not involve workers being killed, it was known as the 'white massacre' (as against the 'red massacres', such as the strike in 1949 at Siglo XX, which was put down by the army with several hundred people being killed). The government, including the PIR ministers, found in favour of Patiño, and the Political Bureau of the PIR, aware of the damage the Potosí massacre had done to the party's reputation, was forced to disassociate itself from its ministers, although they were not expelled from the party. The general strike referred to in this article was called in the aftermath of the 'white massacre'.

8. Enrique Peñaranda (1892- ) was a commander in the Chaco War against Paraguay during the 1930s, and later a pro-USA President until overthrown in 1943. A miners' strike against the rising cost of living at Catavi in 1942 was brutally suppressed by the army, resulting, officially, in 19 deaths, or, according to inde­pendent sources, 400 deaths.

9. The Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores de Bolivia (CSTB) was formed in November 1936. A split in August 1940 left it under the control of the Stalinists of the PIR. It faded away in the revolution in 1952.

10. Juan Lechín Oquendo (1914- ), the leader of the Bolivian miners' union, was a supporter of the MNR, and became associated with the POR for a while in the late 1940s, only to return to the MNR. In 1952 he became Minister for Mines in the Paz Estenssoro government. He fell out of favour with the MNR leadership in the mid-1950s, and, after being expelled from the MNR in January 1964, he formed his own party, the PRIN, the Party of the Revolutionary Nationalist Left. He backed the military coup of 4 November 1964 against the MNR. The junta repaid him for his services by arresting and expelling him from the country in 1965.

11. The massacre of strikers at Potosí was accompanied by the harsh repression of rebellious peasants.

12. The Communist Party of Chile was declared illegal on 3 September 1948, a year after leaving a Communist-Liberal-Radical coalition government.

13. Colonel Juan Domingo Perón (1895-1974) was the populist military dictator of Argentina in 1946-55 and 1973-74.

14. The Stalinists often referred to the MNR/Radepa government as 'Fascist'.

15. The Octubre group was one of the groups emerging from the collapse of the Argentine PORS. It split from the Fourth International in 1947, and its leader, Jorge Abelardo Rámos, became an apologist for Peronism. Luis Velasco's article 'Perón: Argentine Sub-Imperialist; Structural Changes in Latin America' ap­peared in the January 1948 issue of New International. Velasco cites from Octubre (No 3/1947):

It is the duty of the vanguard in the United States to give political support to every step taken by the nationalist-bourgeois government of Argentina against im­perialism.'

And then comments:

'It should be evident now that the Argentine Trotskyists wish to be more Catholic than the Pope and more Peronista than Perón, leading forward the bourgeois-­democratic revolution in Argentina, Brazil and the other Latin American count­ries with the blessing of Pope Stalin and that "democratic revolutionary" Perón.'

16. The Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR, the Revolutionary Nation­alist Movement) was a radical nationalist party formed in 1941. Led by Víctor Paz Estenssoro (1917- ), it formed a government with the Radepa in December 1943 under Major Gualberto Villarroel (1908-1946), and won a majority in the elections of 1944. A coup of 21 July 1946, organised by the traditional right wing parties, popularly known as the `Rosca', and backed by the Stalinist PIR, overthrew Villarroel, who was hung from a lamppost. The MNR led unsuccessful rebellions against the `Rosca' government in August-September 1949 and May 1950. The MNR did well in the 1951 Presidential elections, with Paz Estenssoro winning the Presidential post, and Hernán Siles Zuazo (1914- ) winning the Vice-Presidential post. The elections were annulled by the sitting President. Paz Estenssoro became President after the MNR's seizure of power in the revolution of April 1952, and the MNR remained in power until it was overthrown in a military coup in 1964.

17. José Carlos Mariátegui (1895-1930) was a pioneer Peruvian Marxist, and the theoretician of the Socialist Party formed in 1926, which became the Communist Party of Peru after his death.

18. Aprista: the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA, American Pop­ular Revolutionary Alliance) was a pan-Latin American petit-bourgeois populist current founded in Mexico in 1924 by Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre (1895- ). It had sections in many Latin American countries, and its main party was in Peru, where, although it never came to power, it did hold ministerial posts in a short-­lived coalition in the late 1940s.

19. Villarroelistas: a term for supporters of the MNR/Radepa government of 1943-46, which was popular with the miners because of reforms which it introduced, which among other things allowed union recognition and prevented the victimisation of union activists. By the time this government was overthrown, most Bolivian miners were organised in the FSTMB, which was controlled by the MNR.