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Trotskygrad on the Altiplano by Bill Weinberg

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Trotskygrad on the Altiplano by Bill Weinberg JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 reviews Trotskygrad on the Altiplano By Bill Weinberg a militant (at times, even revolution- ian labor movement (from the 1930s ary) labor movement that aligned through the 1980s) with articles with Leon Trotsky and his Fourth from the left and especially Trotsky- International, and rejected Joseph ist press of the day, in both Bolivia Stalin and his Kremlin successors. In and the United States—rescuing a Bolivia’s Radical Tradition: Permanent wealth of information from falling Revolution in the Andes, S. Sándor John into pre- digital oblivion. The book explores the roots of this exceptional- is illustrated with reproductions of ism. To his credit, he resists the temp- radical art and propaganda as well as tation of mechanistic explanations— period photos. John also offers first- but the answer is pretty clearly rooted hand interviews with veterans of the in sheer oppression. miners’ struggle. Faced with a nasty, brutish, and The POR and the PIR were both short life in the tin mines of the founded in the aftermath of the di- altiplano (chronic silicosis made sastrous Chaco War (1932–5), a for an average lifespan of 40 years), senseless and costly conflict with Bolivia’s miners had little patience Paraguay, in which Bolivia’s old oli- for the Moscow-mandated line of garchic political class lost much “two-stage” revolution, which urged credibility—in John’s words, “the subordination to the “bourgeois- death throes of the ancien régime.” BOLIVIA’s Radical TRADITION: democratic” political process un- More enlightened sectors of this PERMANENT REVOLUTION IN THE til feudalism was dismantled and class subsequently began affecting a ANDES by S. Sándor John, University modern capitalism established. The populist posture, as they sensed the of Arizona Press, 2009, 320 pp., $55 Trotskyist doctrine of permanent pressure building from below. (hardcover) revolution referenced in John’s sub- Over the generations, this align- title, in contrast, emphasized unre- ment of forces made for situations lenting hostility to the ruling class both Kafkaesque in their complexity BOLIVIA , NOTORIOUSLY LANDLOCKED AND and no postponement of the strug- and Orwellian in their irony. Begin- impoverished, is today at the fore- gle for socialism. ning after the Chaco War, military front of forging a post–Cold War anti- The barbarity of Bolivia’s political and conservative regimes sought to imperialism—emphasizing an indig- class nearly made the ascendance of co-opt the workers’ movement—and enous vision rather than European this doctrine inevitable. The litany of failing to do so, would resort again to ideologies. But it was generations of army massacres of striking miners, bloody repression. The poorly named bitter struggle that culminated in the at irregular intervals for generations, Revolutionary Left Party became a 2005 election of the Aymara peas- beginning in 1923, makes for grim willing partner in this strategy, even ant leader and declared socialist Evo reading. The labor movement—its taking posts in the government’s Morales to the presidency. As elsewhere program expounded in a fiery 1946 newly created labor bureaucracy; in South America, world ideological document called the “Thesis of these same “revolutionary left” bu- contests, including the schisms within Pulcayo”—was generally in the sway reaucrats then ordered troops to fire the socialist camp, played themselves of the Trotsky-aligned Revolutionary on protesting workers in the Potosí out in Bolivia during the years be- Workers Party (POR), rejecting the massacre of 1947. tween the Russian Revolution and the official timidity of the Bolivian Com- In the Popular Front strategy of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The way they munist Party and its predecessor, the war years—when Bolivia was an im- did, however, made Bolivia unique. Revolutionary Left Party (PIR). portant source of tin for the Allies— Alone on the South American con- John documents the POR’s rise these Stalinists who connived with tinent, Bolivia saw the emergence of and period of sway over the Boliv- fascistic regimes joined with Wash- 43 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS reviews ington in accusing militant miners of a corporatist system of state control. tary rule that followed the National abetting fascism. Juan Lechín, leader of the newly Revolution period. In the 1960s, new Yet the Trotskyist POR would itself formed Bolivian Workers’ Central dictators extended the seesaw strategy begin to mirror such ugly compromises (COB), closed ranks with the MNR of co-optation and repression. La- following the Bolivian revolution government, taking his Trotskyist bor’s flirtation with state power was of 1952. This was led by a populist followers with him. Over the follow- broken under the especially bloody but explicitly anti- Communist for- ing decade, the MNR would tilt now regime of René Barrientos, and the mation, the National Revolutionary to the right, now to the left (with the COB was outlawed. After Barrientos’s Movement (MNR), whose own right more conservative party boss Víctor death, however, a new left-nationalist wing had a strong fascistic streak. Paz Estenssoro and his more pro- military regime would rebuild ties to Denied power through the polls af- gressive protégé Hernán Siles Zuazo the COB, and elements of the now di- ter the 1951 presidential election was revolving in power), while never de- vided POR. When the most reaction- annulled by the military, the MNR viating from Washington’s orbit. ary sectors of the military struck back launched an uprising—which, prob- While the POR would finally split with the Hugo Banzer coup of 1971, ably even to the party’s own surprise, over the party’s stance toward the worker militias took to the streets to was avidly joined by spontaneously leadership of the National Revo- resist—albeit unsuccessfully. formed worker militias, routing the lution, even renewed repression A final irony concerned Che Gue- army in a matter of days. John’s inter- against miners would not lead to an vara’s ill-fated adventure in Bolivia in views with veterans of these militias overt break between the COB and 1967. Guevara and his French publi- make for a vivid portrayal of the April the MNR until 1964—the same year cist Régis Debray, like the Trotskyists, 1952 street fighting. MNR rule ended with a right-wing rejected official Moscow-line timidity This unanticipated upheaval coup d’état. in Latin America, calling for armed helped move the MNR to the left, but Unfortunately, this dynamic con- revolution from the jungles and also led the workers’ movement into tinued even with the reprise of mili- mountains. Yet, like the orthodox nacla.org •BreakingWeb-onlynewsandanalysis. •40+yearsofarchivedNACLAReports. •Aneditedfeedofthebestcoverageof LatinAmericafromaroundtheWeb. •Plusspecialfeatures,eventslistings, classroomtools,andmuchmore! As a current subscriber, you have access to 10 years of archived NACLA Reports free of charge. Register now! 44 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2011 reviews Stalinists, they rejected the Trotsky- of the Peruvian thinker José Carlos ists and their ethic of mass workers’ Mariátegui, who sought to merge struggle—which they saw as a dis- Marxism and the Andean indigenist traction from the guerrilla foco that tradition. But he ultimately boils it they asserted was the true vanguard. down to the oversimplified dictum This despite the fact that the POR ral- (from a 1929 Comintern document) lied around the Cuban Revolution, that “in Bolivia, the proletariat is with party leader Guillermo Lora indigenous”—and then moves on. traveling to the island to meet with Indeed the miners and peasants Fidel Castro. And despite the fact alike were overwhelmingly of Ay- that Debray himself had earlier called mara and Quechua ethnicity. This Bolivia the one Latin American coun- fact was not merely incidental; the try “where revolution might take the indigenous and rural dimension classical Bolshevik form.” would re-emerge powerfully follow- Even if Guevara’s formulas were ing Bolivia’s de-industrialization and proved inexact and hubristic in the the concomitant decline of Commu- case of Bolivia, the Trotskyists’ failure nism as a global movement. to grapple with the rural question John’s final chapter notes the would prove critical. Following a virtual dismantling of the mining wave of rural protests, the MNR in- industry under the IMF-mandated stituted an agrarian reform in the al- austerity programs of the new civil- tiplano to win peasant loyalties—and ian governments of the 1980s (in- then used the newly formed peas- cluding under a now thoroughly do- ant militias as a counter-balance to mesticated MNR). The sacked miners the worker militias that brought the overwhelmingly returned to the party to power. The brutal Barrientos land—becoming peasant colonists in would continue in this vein, bring- the lowland regions of Chapare and ing the peasant militias under army Santa Cruz, which had not been af- paratively short treatment he gives control and effectively dividing them fected by the MNR’s agrarian reform. the anarcho-syndicalism that pre- from the miners—a point that John This opened up a whole new stage ceded Trotskyism’s rise, or the ethno- does not emphasize. of struggle, in which indigenous nationalist “Indianist” movements (his While some POR militants threw identity became critical and Morales term) that have succeeded it. in their lot with peasant land sei- emerged as a key leader. These limitations, if revealing, zures, the party was generally di- The POR still exists, although it don’t detract from the fact that John vided on whether and to what degree has nothing like the power it did has produced an important work that to support the peasant movement— in its heyday. John notes that it has is timely despite its 20th-century seemingly due to a dogmatic insis- recently decried the Morales gov- context. His original research opens a tence that the industrial proletariat ernment’s repression of protesting new window on the highly distinctive is always the motor of revolutionary miners—which was certainly nothing and little-studied radical history of a change.
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