The rise of the mineowners

One can but ask what became of the wealthy mineowners of the colonial period, and the powerful guild of azogueros (silver smelters), who in their time created the exceedingly important bank of San Carlos de Potosí. These men built their wealth on the corpses of the mitayos (forced labourers). They worked together in the guild to introduce many revolutionary changes in the mining industry, and were prepared to overcome any obstacle. Unlike other Latin American countries, Upper Peru did not have a powerful merchant sector with strong connections with European capitalism; this is to say, it lacked the nucleus for a potential contemporary bourgeoisie.

From military defeat to ‘Military Socialism’

After the Chaco War the petty bourgeoisie almost effortlessly assumed control of the labour movement. The war had elevated the middle classes to a position of primary importance in the country's political life and they had been radicalised by the mobilisation for war. As a result of this new situation the pre-war attempts by the workers to set up class-based political organisations suffered a setback. In the immediate post-war period the independent socialist movement lost ground. The working class in general became alienated from politics, with the result that the workers' parties either found themselves isolated or else, in order to survive, joined up with petty-bourgeois groups and parties and soon became absorbed by the so-called state-socialist party which supported successive military régimes.

Once again intellectuals and students revived the claim that they had some special right to lead the masses, a course which always results in the workers sacrificing themselves for interests other than their own. Since almost all the Marxist union leaders were in exile, the unions tended to lose their class ideology and become dominated by chauvinist ideas. Thus, for example, remaining labour leaders organised the Confederación de Trabajadores de Bolivia in January 1935 and on 1 May 1935 (six weeks before the end of the war) issued a May Day manifesto which scarcely differed from the declarations of the dominant classes:

An independent Bolivia has been in existence for a century and a half, although the present-day frontiers are much more recent. Throughout that period there have been two main economic activities: very-low-productivity agriculture for local consumption, and relatively-high-productivity extractive industries for remote world markets. Until the eradication of malaria about 30 years ago almost the entire labour force was concentrated on the western third of the present-day territory, scattered across the lunar landscapes of the Altiplano or huddled in the few overcrowded temperate valley basins. Whether engaged in agriculture or mining, the living conditions of Bolivian workers were miserable, and even in the 1960s average income per capita was reckoned to be lower than in any other South American republic. (This calculation may no longer hold true since 1974, when oil and natural gas for the first time overtook minerals as the chief source of Bolivia's foreign exchange, but although average income may now be rising fast, the benefits are being very unevenly distributed.)

So miserable were the health and nutritional conditions of most Bolivians that the natural population-growth rate remained low; and so remote and inaccessible was the republic from world markets that virtually no immigrants could be attracted in. Quite the contrary, in the twentieth century Bolivian workers have migrated in tens of thousands to the nitrate mines of northern Chile, the sugar harvests of northern Argentina, and more recently to the factories of Córdoba and the construction sites of Buenos Aires.

The new republic

Until 1952 less than 10% of Bolivia's population were able to participate in the country's elections, but the economic and social transformation of Bolivia has been accomplished by the remaining 90% of the population, the exploited, the uneducated and the illiterate. These people, the majority, are capable of playing a role in history beyond the imagination of even the most astute members of the oligarchy. A generation ago 80% of the population were still illiterate (above all the peasantry and the working class), and an even higher proportion never really used written sources of information. Consequently, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois reformers adopted the slogan ‘Literacy will liberate the Indian’, but until 1952 the school system was tailored to the requirements of the landlord régime and of a few capitalist employers. Even now education is monopolised by a minority, and the means to satisfy even the most basic necessities of life are beyond the reach of the masses. The overwhelming majority of the population, consisting of peasants, workers, artisans, and state functionaries, are poorly fed, inadequately clothed, and unprotected from the ravages of disease.

Since the time of the Inca Empire the Altiplano region (which for practical purposes was really all that Bolivia consisted of in the nineteenth century) lacked any contact with the sea other than the coast near Arica, now in Chilean hands.

The COB and the revolution (1952–6)

Antecedents

Both in terms of organisation and of ideology the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) is the highest achievement so-far of the Bolivian labour movement. If the workers ever really had a revolutionary leadership, it was the COB. Many people have regarded the formation of the COB as unanticipated, as merely a product of the 1952 revolution or a creation of the MNR. But in fact it was the culmination of the whole history of the labour movement, an expression of its rich experience and of the level of development of its class consciousness. Equally there can be no doubt that the COB was the product of intense and persistent campaigning within the labour organisations by political parties. Following the revolution of 9 April 1952, the COB became the most important political force in the country, and the struggle for the control of the country centred around it. This fact confirms the importance of the proletariat, especially the miners, in the revolutionary process.

From the 1920s onwards, the main preoccupation of the unions had been to set up a national labour organisation. Various attempts to do this had failed but, as we have seen, the various national workers' congresses did adopt truly revolutionary programmes which were intended to provide a basis for labour unity.

Repression

The military junta on the offensive

The miners' intransigent position against the military government gradually won over other sectors of the labour movement, and the opposition grew in strength as various political parties, which had at first supported General Barrientos, turned against him. At the May Day demonstrations of 1965 the demonstrators singled out the Military Junta as the target for attack and, although he tried to cool the spirit of the unions, Lechín adopted a radical position, taking care, however, not to identify himself with the communists. ‘At midday, it was Lechín's turn to speak, and from the balcony of the FSTMB office he appealed to the Junta to adopt a new political and economic line adjusted to the current situation of the country…Later on he condemned the United States intervention in Asia and the armed invasion of the Dominican Republic … It was the hope of the people that the armed forces would fulfil their promise to preside over honest elections, he declared.’

Shortly afterwards, on 12 May 1965, the miners, factory and construction workers, and the rural and urban school-teachers signed a pact in La Paz, proclaiming that they would struggle together to defend the trade unions and to secure social and economic improvements for the workers. This proclamation took place while the COB was still in existence.