Bolivia: Why Guevara Failed

...Torn between the Falange which offered Barrientos alliance, and the peasants who besieged him with their demands and warnings—Barrientos chose the peasants...

...Foreign currency became scarce...

...The land title became to him the instrument and symbol of his liberation...

...Peru fears, and not without reason, repercussions of Bolivian guerrilla activities in the Peruvian Andes, for links have been established between the revolutionaries of both countries...

...In Bolivia, the invasions of the haciendas were encouraged by the Trotskyist POR militants...

...In addition, the MNR was weakened by the numerous mid dle-class malcontents who defected to join a new opposition party, the PRA—the ex tremist right-wing "Socialist Falange," formed by feudal landlords who had been ruined through the land reform...

...The colono was tied to the land by his debts, and to the tienda de raya (company store), which was the only store in the village and also belonged to the patron just like the soil and the subsoil, the water and the trees, the house and the animals...

...In such a context a few hundred guerrillas are not a negligible force...

...But the opposition movements are no better off...

...13,000 to 20,000 feet...

...But Lora accuses the government of having robbed the POR of its control over the peasant unions...

...aid helped to restore the country's financial balance and to create a new currency unit, the peso, worth 1,000 old bolivianos...

...and during this period the corn crop doubled...

...Bolivia's population is less than 4 million for a territory of 400,000 square miles—twice the size of France...

...He accuses Paz Estenssoro of sabotaging the land reform by the decree-law of August 2, 1953, which set up a system of expropriation by stages, with indemnity, and the division of land into family-size lots...

...BOLIVIA'S RECENT GUERRILLA episodes, whose protagonists and victims were Che Guevara and Regis Debray, are notable less for their cruelty—to which we have become only too accustomed—than for their chaos and confusion...

...After bloody fighting, the miners' milita men had to surrender their arms...

...Production fell off, from 33,000 tons in 1951 to 27,000 tons in 1955, when the world tin prices collapsed after the end of the Korean War...

...Translated by I. A. LANGNAS...

...Should he pursue a demagogic policy that would please his MNR voters but might ruin the country —or should he take drastic measures that would throw many of his supporters into opposition...

...Bolivia's industrialization is only in its first phase...

...In that spirit, a tactical alliance was concluded between the miners' union (strongly influenced by the POR group of Trotskyist intellectuals) and the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR...

...In his Thesis of Pulacayo Lora asserts that the "democratic-bourgeois revolution" will eventually bring about the overthrow of the landlordmineowner oligarchy: it will lead to an alliance between the middle class and the proletariat—and is therefore the prologue to proletarian revolution...

...for the peasant militias refused to yield their arms...

...T T HE NEW JUNTA, led by General Barrientos, soon broke with the left-wing groups that had helped bring it to power...

...it would not tolerate Castroite control of the 800 kilometer railroad line that joins the Bolivian oil area of Camiri to the Brazilian river port of Corumba on the Paraguay River...

...The miserable living standard of the new peasant owners and the interminable litigations concerning their lands would seem to foster agitation in the countryside...

...Now it is the scene of the clearest clash between the two factions of the Latin-American Left: the revolutionary guerrillas and the united front of progressive forces...

...In the last two years, the orthodox Communists of Latin America have bitterly denounced the tactic of armed struggle, and the two factions clashed violently at the Havana Conference last August...

...The land-reform law of 1953 freed the Indian from forced labor and the threat of imprisonment—by giving him the land he worked...

...Just as the Peru vian peasants have done more recently, with the tacit consent of Viracocha Belaunde" Our Lord Belaunde...

...There around 1964, a movement favoring General Barrientos has developed among the peasant unions of this area...

...B B UT THERE ARE some gaps in this scheme, and they explain the defeat of the rebellion...

...In 1962 Bolivia had 284 nurses, 67 midwives, and 895 doctors— one for every 4,000 inhabitants...

...But the army, which now had become the government's major support, decided to take over: on November 4, 1964, it overthrew Paz Estenssoro and put an end to the nationalist revolution...

...It was a wise precaution, if we may judge by the collapse of production in the agrarian reform zones...

...In the winter of 1960-61 the crisis that was to determine the future course of events came to a head...

...Considering the miserable condition of most of the 152,610 families among whom the MNR distributed 5 million hectares of land (about a quarter of the total area of the big haciendas), it may seem astonishing that the peasants have not made new revolutionary demands...

...But Washington need not contemplate overt intervention...

...Thus, in the fighting of May and September in 1965, the army managed to take the strongholds of the miners, the essential revolutionary base without which the guerrillas may endure but cannot conquer...

...The situation was exacerbated by the disorganized, inefficient administration or the mines, the undisciplined conduct of the miners (whose armed militias were practically beyond the government's control), and the flight of foreign capital and technicians, which produced a drop in production...

...The proliferation of civil servants, the inefficient and fraudulent public services, all badly in need of reform—all this had to be financed by ever larger issues of banknotes...

...8,000 feet), and especially in the mining areas of the Cordillera (alt...

...Barrientos' turn toward the peasants probably saved his government: to the peasants BOLIVIA: WHY GUEVARA FAILED he became the successor of Paz Estenssoro in his dual role as guarantor of small property— and the living incarnation of deified power...

...And last July the Lima newspaper Ultima Hora reported that three Peruvian army lieutenants had joined Che Guevara in his Nacahazu camp in southeastern Bolivia...

...In Brazil and Argentina, united fronts are already being formed with the open or tacit support of the Communists...

...for the miners have been disillusioned by the cautiousness of the nationalist revolutionary regime and the failure of its revolution...

...To begin with, the guerrillas underestimated the strength of the Bolivian army...

...for to the Indians of the Altiplano, the tropical savanna is a hell of fevers and reptiles...

...Most agricultural workers are Quechua and Aymara Indians, not integrated in the BOLIVIA: WHY GUEVARA FAILED country's Spanish civilization...

...Under such conditions how could General Barrientos believe in the Castroite danger...

...but the guerrillas had little to do with it...

...Its experience—and that of other poor countries — proves that in the short run a revolution is a costly undertaking...

...This development has resulted in increased production of such export crops as cotton and sugar, usually grown on big plantations, but also of food crops, which are now practically monopolized by Bolivia's Indian peasant farmers...

...Hope and necessity need a second wind...

...The sectarian ism of Havana, by pushing the middle-class oposition to the Right, has indeed encouraged throughout Latin America military dictatorships, often closely tied to the United States...

...In October, thousands of armed peasants invaded the city of Cochabamba, where the Falange was holding its party congress...

...To understand this development, we must recall the colonato system which existed in Bolivia before the reform of 1953...

...And if he does not believe in it, how can his propaganda offensive be explained...

...Many militant opponents of the new government were arrested and put into the unsanitary prison camps in the Amazonian forests of the El Beni region...

...such action would most likely be undertaken by Bolivia's neighbor countries...

...But this generation, which has lived through the history of seven centuries in the span of seven years of battles and demonstrations, might well have lost the strength for making new revolutionary demands...

...And the disproportion of forces between little Bolivia and her powerful neighbors leaves no doubt as to the outcome of such an intervention...

...Accustomed to a subsistence economy, they work first and foremost to feed their families...

...The principal population centers are in the yungas (the valleys of the Altiplano), concentrated in several high basins as that of Cochabamba (alt...

...And a trainload of food provisions—and probably arms—was sent to Bolivia under strong Argentine army guard...

...Between 1950 and 1963 (the year before the fall of Paz Estenssoro), wheat production rose from 45,652 to 78,400 tons and potato production from 189,384 to 700,000 tons...

...And under these conditions the activities of the guerrillas must seem a hopeless adventure...

...Paz, a responsible economist, could not but choose the second solution...

...Argentina is the least threatened of Bolivia's neighbors, yet the most vigilant...

...Bolivia's middle class, consisting mainly of Spanish-Indian mestizos, forms 26 per cent of the urban population...

...Or will a united front take over the country...

...The miners have a strong desire for change...

...In the summer and fall of 1965, a projected alliance between Barrientos and the right-wing Falange provoked steady ,agitation in the countryside...

...The result was a chaotic infla ELENA DE LA SOUCHERE tion: under Hernan Siles Suazo, who succeeded Paz Estenssoro, the dollar was worth 11,950 bolivianos...

...This was the plan of the guerrillas...

...Paradoxically, one might say that Bolivia did not have the means to support a revolution...

...Germain-des-Pres...

...It was the scene of the most radical of nationalist revolutions, then of its fall through a tacit coalition between two extremes...

...But such plans for cooperation have also been criticized as an infringement upon the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of one country by another...

...of a pretext for intervention...

...And any attempted flight led to beatings or imprisonment— for the judge and the police also were ruled by the patron...

...Indeed, Che Guevara's concept of revolutionary guerrillas was founded upon the hypothesis of a peasant rebellion...

...An encircling wall of vigilance is tightening around Bolivia, as around all countries which are open to the temptation of revolution...

...Bolivia was neglected by the Spanish colonThis article has appeared in the French magazine Preuves...

...The Barrientos regime had to make a decisive choice...

...In the particular case of Bolivia, such an agreement would be at most a pretext and a justification...

...Against what emerged as a de facto alliance of Falangist rebels, Castroite students, and miners, the Paz Estenssoro government could only field a small army of 10,000 men...

...It is not surprising, under these conditions, that the per-capita income produced is among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere: $150 a year...

...The Castroite theoreticians note, not without justification, that in a society as unstructured as that of Bolivia, any coherent minority could rule...

...The unbalanced economy placed Paz Estenssoro, who was reelected for the 1960-64 term, before an agonizing choice...

...Agriculture," he says, "is the last bastion of the MNR...

...He had put an end to the nationalist revolution, but he wanted to preserve its basic objective—not to restore the old regime...

...Will the joint efforts of the guerrillas and the regime's propagandists give the specter of revolution enough substance to consolidate the Barrientos government...

...In exchange, the creditors demanded a reorganization of COMIBOL and the dismissal of surplus government personnel...

...This alliance was led by economist Victor Paz Estenssoro...

...To ensure the support of the army, the MNR leader Estenssoro, running and reelected for a third term in January 1964, chose for his Vice-President a young air force general, Rene Barrientos...

...Bolivia's choice will be a test case for all Latin America...

...The military regime, which had come to power through the split in this coalition, would have little chance of survival if a united front of the middle class and the proletariat were reestablished--especially if it were led by an MNR leader like Siles Suazo, who would not be opposed by Washington or by Bolivia's neighbors...

...Barrientos, for example, started a giant propaganda operation around them as soon as he felt menaced by the possible reconstitution of the "United Front...

...If Castro were to conquer the mountain stronghold of the Bolivian Andes, he would spread insurrection to the Peruvian Andes, and on to the Brazilian Matto Grosso...

...In response to the people's indignation, Juan Lechin, the leader of the miners' union and Vice-President of the Republic, now joined the opposition—the small Castroite and Communist groups...

...Actually, the decree-law was passed, not to respect the rights of the landlords, but to ensure the maintenance of production in a large rural sector...

...It destroyed the miners' strongholds in two successive attacks in May and September of 1965...

...Brazil fears a guerrilla intervention in the Matto Grosso...

...Guillermo Lora, the Trotskyist theoretician, has emphasized the importance of this class as a revolutionary factor, for its numbers and aspirations exceed its employment opportunities...

...The Peruvian peasants, race brothers of the Quechuas and Aymaras of Bolivia, liken their President to a divinity of the Inca pantheon...

...in exchange he had to give three days of work each week without pay...

...Lora ascribes this to the efforts of the government to force the peasants to evacuate lands not included in the expropriation plan and to the long legal actions which followed...

...Both the POR opposition and the MNR government party fought for control of the miners' and peasants' unions...

...Today, guerrilla leaders still hope that the old shock troops of the mining union will give them the final victory...

...A feeble democratic government, it was implied, would not be able to resist this menace —and Bolivia could be saved only by General Barrientos and his heroic army...

...The colono was allowed to cultivate a small piece ELENA DE LA SOUCHERE of his patron's land for his own family...

...Today, peasants' militias stand ready to fight for the Barrientos regime, whenever that may be necessary...

...But the decline of production can also be explained by the lack of seed and farm machinery, the ignorance of the Indians, and their ancestral habits...

...Once again, the Indian peasants did not passively submit to any influence: collectively they intervened in political life...

...Bolivia's guerrillas were ensconced in the savanna, at the foot of the magnificent winding mountain road that joins Santa Cruz to the Altiplano...

...But now the two government parties—the Popular Christian Movement, founded last year by the President, and the PRA, led by Minister of Foreign Affairs Walter Guevara Arce — are like general staffs without armies...

...But a border agreement of this kind might still enable a government which is a satellite of Washington to suppress a nationalist and democratic emancipation movement in a neighboring country The result might be another Santo Domingo achieved through an intermediary nation...

...To raise tin production, the government signed, on June 11, 1961, a three-way agreement with the United States, West Germany, and the Inter-American Development Bank...

...The element of surprise, which did so much for the Cuban guerrillas in 1959, no longer existed...

...they were the fighting vanguard that ensured the victory of the nationalist revolution in 1952...

...T T HE FAILURE of the revolution is best explained by the split between the two social forces whose cooperation had made revolution possible in 1952: the mining proletariat—and the middle class which, in Bolivia as in other Latin-American countries, is now in a state of development that is unrelated to the present economic changes...

...But in Bolivia, as in almost all Latin-American countries, it is the peasantry which supplies the decisive support of the nationalist regime...

...The break in this coalition was finally caused by poverty: Bolivia, unlike Venezuela, did not have the necessary resources to finance reforms...

...Such a coalition would also enjoy at least tacit support of the orthodox Communists, who, in Bolivia as elsewhere in Latin America, favor "united fronts...

...Most of these relatively affluent peasants live in the high basin of Cochabamba, the most fertile part of the country...

...The patron could hire out the colono's services to a third party...

...Bolivia is separated from its northern neighbors by the dense forests of Amazonas and the semitropical, unarable savannas of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, two areas that cover 70 per cent of the national territory...

...This exclusive reliance- on a single export item places the whole economy at the mercy of the slightest fluctuation of the world tin market...

...But the workers were not sufficiently dissatisfied to break with the MNR government, and their support kept it in power for several years...

...Thus, to the peasants, Paz Estenssoro became the founder of the land reform and the guarantor of the new distribution of land...

...And so far they have failed to unite against the military regime...

...In his book The Bolivian Revolution, Guillermo Lora, leader and ideologist of that party, advocates a total expropriation, without indemnity, of the big haciendas, and their collective exploitation...

...The Soviet Union supports these tactics and seems determined to bring about a rapprochement with the democratic governments of Latin America...

...In 1961 the country had only 5,295 rural schools, with 7,190 teachers who were almost all recently hired and without diploma...

...To deal with the situation, a tenyear development plan, 30 per cent of which was financed by the U.S., was put into effect...

...The peasants became frightened and sent one delegation after another to the capital, and the interim President had to offer reassurances...

...The MNR, of course, found its most solid support among that minority of peasants which profited most by the land distribution...

...the fall in agricultural production, after the land reform, forced the government to import food on a very large scale...

...Bolivia's Indian peasant now moved from the condition of de facto serfdom worthy of the twelfth century to that of the poorest peasants of Brittany or Galicia at the beginning of the nineteenth century...

...To be sure, on July 3, 1966, Barrientos legalized his position through a Presidential election—under military control...

...To satisfy the voters, the government had to act as an employment agency for middle-class bureaucrats...

...This agreement gave Bolivia $37 million worth of credit...

...A limited border agreement between two neighboring countries could indeed make it easier to expel guerrillas, and thus deprive the U.S...

...BOLIVIA'S STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE derives less from the raw material deposits in its subsoil—the tin of the Altiplano, the oil of Camiri—than from its geographic position, at the southern end of the large Indian-populated area embracing Colombia, Equador, and Peru...

...The regular army half-heartedly launched a disarmament action but abandoned it soon...

...T T HE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION Was equally unfavorable...

...the balance of trade deteriorated from bad to worse...

...More than a battlefield, Bolivia is, today as yesterday, a laboratory for Latin-American political experiments...

...The "mystery of Che Guevara" puts us face to face with the mystery of Bolivia, and the tribulations of Regis Debray offer us clues to an understanding of present-day Bolivia...

...From there they hoped to join up with the miners of Catavi and Oruro, to revive the old rebellion of the mining strongholds...

...And in the last century Bolivia was treated even worse by her sister republics: a war with Chile deprived her of the port of Antofagasta and of a share in the Pacific shore...

...In this environment the tin-mining industry has created a proletariat of 70,000 miners which is concentrated in a few areas...

...These dismissals, and the transfer of expendable workers to the Santa Cruz-Camiri oil region, roused the mining population against the Paz Estenssoro regime...

...The United States has sent to Bolivia intelligence experts and advisers trained at an anti-guerrilla school in Panama...

...Bolivia's arable land is confined to the Altiplano, a plateau whose average altitude is 14,000 feet and which is ceaselessly swept by icy winds...

...Castro indeed was tempted to attack Bolivia, at the southern border of this Indian Cordillera—which he hoped to convert into the Sierra Maestro of South America— though Colombian and Venezuelan guerrillas were already attacking the area in the north...

...His hold on the peasants was demonstrated in January 1966, when he entrusted the Presidency temporarily to General Ovando, to devote himself to his election campaign...

...The guerrillas' hopes were, of course, founded on the weakness of the government's program...

...The peasantry is dominated by the fear of repression and a superstitious respect for power — rooted in the old Inca tradition which deified the Chief...

...The Falange (right-wing), the remaining members of the MNR (center), the PRIN led by Lechin (Left), the Communist party (now split into five groups), the Trotskyist POR, and the small Castroite groups are only active in intellectual circles and have practically no BOLIVIA: WHY GUEVARA FAILED influence among the masses of the population...

...The Castroite guerrillas have contributed heavily to the disintegration of the Left and have been a providential alibi for military regimes...

...The Bolivian Andes is the poorest and the most vulnerable region in Latin America...

...The Indian who fought for him felt that he was defending his land and freedom...

...izers who viewed it merely as an area with mining prospects, to be left behind as quickly as possible for Lima, their city of pleasure...

...U.S...

...COMIBOL (the government's tin commission) employed one official for every three miners...

...This Communist attitude dates from the summer of 1965, when Moscow celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the Seventh Comintern Congress (July-August 1935), which started the European "United Fronts...

...He created a psychosis of terror: It had to be shown that little Bolivia was about to be assaulted by a vast international conspiracy— with ramifications in Moscow and Peking, Havana and St...

...They do represent a danger, just like the general guerrilla war advocated by Cuba, or the inter-American intervention force proposed by Washington...

...Barrientos and his friends feared the success of the negotia ELENA DE LA SOUCHERE tion, started, broken off, and resumed again on a number of occasions, between the MNR and the miners' leader Juan Lechin, to reconstitute the coalition of 1952...

...Tin, which brings in 75 per cent of the country's foreign trade, is exported in its raw state...

...Though his new property did not give the Indian peasant affluence, at least it gave him freedom...

...There was fear in La Paz...

...And one must admit that in no other LatinAmerican country have guerrillas enjoyed the support of such an important proletarian nucleus...

...And he now showed an unexpected attachment to his individual property—to the detriment of both the aylus (the old Indian village communities) and the agrarian cooperatives which the MNR tried to set up...

...agriculture employs three-quarters of the working population...

...In 1967, after a special meeting of the heads of the three branches of Argentina's armed forces and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, President Ongania reinforced the border garrisons...

...It brought Estenssoro to power in 1952 and enabled him to effect a number of structural reforms: new agrarian laws, nationalization of mines and railroads, and the creation of a government oil agency to work the Camiri oil fields...

...This minority soon became a distinct group, separate from the mass of the poor and wretched, and had begun to produce for the market by the end of Paz Estenssoro's second Presidential term...

...This kind of intervention will probably be favored by agreements on defense cooperation such as the last OAS conference (September 22-24, 1967) recommended between neighboring countries...

...In these circumstances, rebellion can triumph only with the aid of the country's third major force: the peasant militias...

...In 1952, when the Bolivian peasants learned that Paz Estenssoro was about to proclaim a land reform, they threw themselves upon the haciendas...

...Despite an important literacy campagin during the national revolutionary period of the 1950's, the illiteracy rate is still 82 per cent...

...This turn in Soviet policies can be explained by an awareness of the danger that Castro's line represents for Moscow...

...It has recently signed trade agreements with some of them, especially with Chile...

...A gratuitious incoherence permeates all the upheavals in a country which, in the twentieth century, is still struggling to emerge from medieval conditions, and where a new regime, weak yet authoritarian, is subject to diverse and contradictory pressures...

...And only when these two brakes cease to operate, do the masses begin to move...

...With or without it, it is most unlikely that Brazil, Peru, or Argentina would have, or will, tolerate a Castroite takeover of the natural stronghold of the Bolivian Andes...

...A few months later, on July 3, 1966, the peasants gave Barrientos their votes...

...Mining is the only natural resource of this poor country...

...This repression, in turn, brought more guerrillas — students, exiled unionists, and fugitives from the El Beni camps—into Bolivia's resistance movement...