Bolivian Revolution Turns Right

Juan Rey

Labor Action, 8th December, 1952

Bolivian Revolution Turns Right

[...] The nationalization of the mines has been decreed, but not according to the programme and wishes of the majority of the workers. The nationalization bill provides for indemnity to the proprietors if they pay all taxes and back debts to the government. Of course, the question is purely theoretical, since the government has no money, and hence will not pay any indemnity. But the workers regard the expropriation of the mines as a legitimate claim of the revolution. More important is the question of workers’ control. This is a demand of the Central Obrera [trade union federation] and the unions, and is legalised in the nationalization bill, but in a yellow, totalitarian form.

Workers’ Control

The Central Obrera had demanded workers’ administration, administration of the mines by workers’ committees elected by general meetings of all workers, and a national committee to be elected by all mine committees. But the government, while accepting the principle of workers’ control formally, has passed a bill which creates a Corporation Minera Boliviana as a great state mining trust in the place of the three private capitalist corporations. In the new trust the representatives of the workers are in a minority, and are to be nominated by the government.

In this bureaucratic form, workers’ control has been transformed into control over the workers [...].

In the last two meetings of the Central Obrera the rightist tendency under the personal leadership of Lechin overcame the left tendency and defeated the “workers’ bloc” led by the POR. But I have now been informed that new elections in the factory workers’ union have given the left tendency a large majority, and resulted in a defeat for the Nationalists and Stalinists. The left proletarian tendency is also going to win a victory in the building trades union. If this information proves to be correct, the left tendency should win a majority in the Central Obrera Boliviana, and Lechin’s control over this organization could be ended. The workers would then have a political organ through which they can express themselves against both the government and the Nationalist Party.

It is quite possible that these new facts have obliged President Paz Estenssoro to postpone the reorganisation of his cabinet to the end of December, after the national convention of the Nationalist Party. Additional news about the change in the relationship of forces in the Central Obrera will be available shortly. Lechin won his “victory” by a vote of l7 to l3, including the votes of the Stalinists, who supported Lechin against the left tendency. The Central Obrera will reconsider the nationalization bill, as the government needs the support of this representative workers’ body. [...].

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