miners as voters the electoral process in bolivias mining camps

8/18/2019 Miners as Voters the Electoral Process in Bolivias Mining Camps

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Miners as Voters: The Electoral Process in Bolivia's Mining CampsAuthor(s): Laurence WhiteheadSource: Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Nov., 1981), pp. 313-346Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/156073Accessed: 31-03-2016 02:00 UTC

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1. Lat. Amer. Stud. 13, 2, 3I3-46

Miners as Voters: The Electoral Process

in Bolivia's Mining Camps

by LAURENCE WHITEHEAD*

Introduction

In the I940s Bolivia's mineworkers achieved a major impact in national

elections. The electoral system was favourable to them (far more so than after

the 1952 National Revolution); they acquired a unified and effective national

leadership, with extensive back-up organization in all the main mining

camps; they, therefore, began casting their votes as a single block, an ex-

pression of mineworkers' exceptional degree of solidarity in various parts of

the world; and the political parties that courted their votes were constrained

by the demands of their electorate, not only to adopt intransigent language

but actually to become more radical in their programmes, recruitment and

commitments. Given the power structure existing in Bolivia's mining zones

in the I940S, there was never much prospect that a significant change in the

miners' life situation could be brought about purely by electoral methods, and

the miners' union, FSTMB, rapidly became far more than a vote-getting and

controlling vehicle or political machine in the electoral sense. It challenged

the essential prerogatives of the management, using electoral support as just

one means of mobilizing for fundamentally revolutionary ends. In these

circumstances, the electoral system soon became too dangerous for dominant

interests to tolerate its continuance. However, they failed to establish a viable

alternative system of politics. The Revolution of April 1952 engulfed the big

mineowners and most landowners, military men and traditional parties.

Initially it gave Bolivia's mineworkers a vanguard role in the running of the

country and the defence of the revolution. It also projected a highly selective

version of pre-revolutionary history.

A quarter of a century later it is beyond dispute that most of the mine-

workers' initial economic and social gains from the revolution have proved

illusory or transient,' and they have lost even the degree of electoral leverage

* Research for this article was financed by the SSRC. The author wishes to thank

Alan Angell and James Dunkerley for their helpful comments.

For an analysis of the predicament of Bolivia's mineworkers during the i96os and

1970s, see Laurence Whitehead, 'Sobre el radicalismo de los trabajadores mineros de

Bolivia', Revista Mexicana de Sociologia (UNAM, Mexico City), No. 4, I980.

0022-216x/81/JL,4S-I324 $02.00 .? 1981 Cambridge University Press

3 13



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314 Laurence Whitehead

they possessed in the 194os. Now that the promise of the revolutionary dawn

has faded, it may be possible to see more clearly into the pre-revolutionary

night. In the case of the mineworkers, the establishment in 1944 of their major

trade union, the Federacion Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia

(FSTMB) and its subsequent organizational and political evolution, has

recently been given serious attention.2

This article presents hitherto neglected evidence concerning the nature of

the politics in Bolivia's mining camps prior to the establishment of the

FSTMB. This, and subsequent electoral evidence, is used to demonstrate the

easily overlooked role of electoral politics in paving the way for the National

Revolution in April I952, which was, among other things, an armed revolt

which enforced the results of the thwarted I951 elections.

Why is so little attention paid to electoral processes by students of Latin

American politics? It is true that electoral analysis of the type that flourishes

in some Anglo-Saxon democracies assumes an institutional stability that is

absent in most of Latin America, and that such analysis can become an over-

refined technique devoid of political content. However, this case study seeks

to demonstrate that if such deformations professionelles are avoided, the

study of electoral processes can contribute to our understanding of some of

the central issues of Latin American politics, such as the process by which

revolutionary mobilization of the lower classes can occur, and the reasons

why dominant minorities may find it difficult to legitimize their political

ascendancy.

The Pre-Revolutionary Electoral System

Of course, it would be naive to accept the national electoral system of pre-

revolutionary Bolivia at face value. There is no case of peaceful transition of

office from one party to another as the result of an electoral defeat, either

before or after the Revolution. The elections of 1978, 1979 and 1980 have

unfortunately proved no exceptions. In I898, the Liberals displaced the

Conservatives by means of a short civil war, after which it took a coup - in

1920 - for the Republicans to displace the Liberals, and they in turn broke

up into rival factions that were unable to coexist within the framework of

electoral competition, but instead resolved their differences by force.

Civilian parties revived in the 1940S, but it was the shifting fortunes of

military factions that determined the ensuing alternations in office (I943,

1946, I949 and I95I). Elections were held to ratify a previously established

government, or possibly to permit the competing elements in a coalition to

2 Guillermo Lora, A History of the Bolivian Labour Movement I848-i971 (CUP,

I977 .



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Miner as Voters 315

measure their relative strength against each other. Only once did a national

election result in victory for the opposition party - that was in I95I when

Paz Estenssoro of the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, campaigning

from exile, topped the poll in a presidential election. Before the count was

completed a military junta took over power to block his return. Clearly, this

was no Anglo-Saxon system of electoral sovereignty. Nevertheless, the events

of 1951 which gave the MNR moral authority for its successful revolutionary

endeavours in I952, show that not all elections were totally controlled.

Indeed, organizing for electoral contests was an important element of party

activity which was closely intertwined with the conspiratorial and insur-

rectionary aspects. Success in both aspects was indispensable if a party was to

grow in strength sufficiently to beat down its opponents, and accordingly

party strategists had to strike a delicate balance between two somewhat in-

compatible styles of campaigning. Let us consider what was demanded by the

electoral system.

Herbert Klein has written that the pre-revolutionary electorate was a 'tiny

elite of literate persons. . . divided between a small middle class and an even

more minuscule upper class, both of which were primarily urban'. On his

figures the total number of votes cast rose from only 30,000 in 1884 to some

43,000 in I904 and a little over 70,000 in 19I3, I9I7, and I926. He has

also estimated that in the first fifty years of this century the electorate rose

from about 3 per cent of the total population to about 7 per cent.3 These

figures certainly seem tiny by international standards, but they were not so

negligible in the Bolivian context. In fact, the suffrage was far from being

confined to a middle and upper class elite, or to the cities, and it doubled

between 1940 and I95I. Moreover, a significant, and strategically located,

fraction of the electorates were mineworkers; and accordingly the major

mining camps received their due in the campaign strategies of the main

political parties during various electoral contests before I95I. Furthermore,

the periodic upsurges in party activity occasioned by elections produced pro-

found effects both on political life, and more importantly on industrial

relations, within the mining camps. This hitherto under-estimated facet of

pre-revolutionary Bolivian politics is best approached by considering, first,

the formal basis of representation and, second, the less formal techniques by

which powerholders attempted to manage or manipulate the electoral process.

8 Herbert Klein, Parties and Political Change in Bolivia (CUP, i968), p. i68. Accord-

ing to other sources, 30,500 votes were cast in the 1884 Presidential contest; 40,800

in 1904; 69,000 in 19I3; and 86,000 in I9I7. There was no election in 1926.



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(i) The Formal Basis of Representation

Only literate adult male nationals were entitled to the vote before 1952, and

in order to exercise this right it was necessary to have oneself registered on

the civic list, which was closed thirty days before each election. On the day of

the election it was necessary to appear in person at the polling booth, which

until the I920S could be an open table in full public view. Until I945, voting

only took place in seats of provincial government (of which there were not

more than 98) or of the next lower unit of administration, the seccion

municipal (of which there were not more than 227). Those resident in the

lowest unit of administration, the 1,200 or more cantones, would have to

travel to their nearest electoral centre in order to cast their vote. This last

provision impeded electoral participation by important concentrations of

Bolivian mineworkers, until it was amended by the Villarroel government.

During the twenty years of Liberal government, the number of registered

electors almost doubled, reaching about ioo,ooo by 1920. On the face of it,

the suffrage had been extended to a majority of the country's literate adult

males during this period, even applying a fairly generous interpretation of

the term 'literate'.

However, by the end of the Liberal era, electoral reform and the need

for honest voting procedures had become the major theme of opposition

politicians, who expressed their contempt for official fraud by boycotting

elections like that of May I920 which preceded, and in a sense precipitated,

the Republican Party's coup d'etat in July of the same year. One of the first

acts of the new Junta was to modify the legislation regulating elections that

had grown up since i889. President Saavedra (author, before the coup, of a

pamphlet advocating electoral reform) commented on the innovations as

follows:

Naturally the method of compiling the electoral registers, which is the base for

honest voting, has been completely changed. Special notaries now have effective

responsibility for their compilation and protection. Thus, an end has been put to

the practice of multiple registration of voters, which was at the heart of all

electoral misdeeds. There have also been important modifications to the voting

process, in order to shield it from fraud, violence and foul play... a decree has

been promulgated conferring responsibility for the maintenance of order and the

upholding of electoral processes to commissions of citizens representing the

various parties or candidates, presided over by a neutral officer. These commis-

sions have charge of the public forces and are in charge of the civil guard. The

police have therefore been definitively excluded from all interference in the

electoral process. ..4

4 From the Presidential message to Congress, August I921, quoted in Carlos Aramayo

Alzerreca, Saavedra: El Ultimo Caudillo (La Paz, I94I), pp. 188-90.



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Miner as Voters 3 17

In practice, Saavedra's electoral reforms failed to legitimize the party

system, but they produced major changes in the formal processes of represen-

tation that generally lasted until the 1952 revolution.

Following the Chaco War, commentators were disappointed to find that

the number of registered voters had hardly increased compared with a

generation earlier, despite strong administrative incentives to persuade

citizens to register and to vote.5

The pressure on all eligible citizens to register requires particular stress.

The pro-government La Naci6n of January 4th I940, stated that 'those who

fail in their civic duty [to register] will be severely punished. In this hour,

indifference is a crime. The mass of workers are the most numerous sector

and indeed constitute almost the entirety of the electorate [my emphasis].

They are required to fulfil this obligation, as are the private employees.'

Table i shows the growth of the total electorate between I940 and

I951:

TABLE I

1940 105000

1944 129 000

1947 129000

I95I 211 000

Source: La Razon (La Paz), March 3rd I940; July 2nd, 1944. El Diario (La

Paz), May 6th, 1951 gives the I951 total as 205,000, but before including the

province of Tarija, which contained about 6,ooo electors.

The big increase between I947 and 1951 shows that, despite all the official

threats of the early I940s, there remained a considerable proportion of

individuals eligible to vote who did not bother to register, at least until

partisan passions were inflamed by the intense political campaign of the late

I940s. However, by I95I it seems likely that a very high proportion of

eligible voters were registered. From the I950 census it appears that there

5 On March i6 1938, the British Ambassador noted the administrative pressure to vote

as follows: '80 per cent of the La Paz electorate did in fact vote, but only, so it

seems, for the purpose of obtaining a certificate to the effect that they had been to

the polls, since it appears that some 75 per cent of this 80 per cent of voters did not

in fact vote for any specific candidate, but simply wrote on their papers ribald

remarks...' London: Public Record Office (PRO), Foreign Office Archives, Bolivia,

Vol. 37I/2I4I8/A3062/984/S. Two years later La Razon (La Paz) commented

editorially on February 14 1940, that the 73,394 citizens on the electoral register at

the beginning of the month was 'well below pre-war levels, and an indication of the

apoliticism of modern youth. A very discouraging sign.' Eventually the numbers

were boosted by an additional 3I,000.



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were 257,229 literate males aged 20 or more resident in Bolivia. Approaching

20,000 of these would be ineligible to register, either because they were not

yet 21, or because they were non-nationals. It seems, therefore, that 21 I,000

out of approximately 240,000, i.e. around 88 per cent of eligible citizens were

registered to vote on the eve of the revolution.

The President of the Republic was directly elected for a four year, non-

renewable, term and required an absolute majority of the votes cast. In 1873

and again in 1884 the front-running candidate for the Presidency had failed

to win an absolute majority, with the result that Congress was required to

choose between the three leading contenders. However, on both occasions

the candidate with the largest number of popular votes was ratified by

Congress. It seems that those who wished to thwart Paz Estenssoro's victory

in the i95 elections first attempted to alter the count in order to deny him

an absolute majority of the popular vote. Thereafter, had there been no

military coup they would have needed to persuade Congress to abandon the

practice of endorsing the front-running candidate, evidently no easy task.

Congress was bi-cameral with a department-wide electorate as the con-

stituency for senatorial contests, and a province-wide electorate for each

deputy. Each department (of which there were eight in 900o and nine in

195I) elected multiple senators (two per department in 900o, three per

department in I950), each for a six-year term. Provincial deputies were

elected for a four-year term according to the single member constituency,

first past the post system, but there were multiple member constituencies in

the departmental capitals (which elected four members each - apart from

La Paz which elected six). The number of deputies in Congress rose from

72 in I900 to 112 in I952, more or less matching the population increase.

However, although the average deputy represented around 25,000 in-

habitants, his electorate had not reached 2,000 votes even in I95I. Many

were elected by little more than a clique of friends. For example, in 1944 the

MNR leader and future President, Hernan Siles Suazo, was elected deputy

for Murillo province, La Paz department, with only 319 votes cast in his

favour (by 1946 he had boosted the figure to 400). Paz Estenssoro, the

founder and Jefe of the MNR, who came from a leading political family in

the southern city of Tarija, was elected deputy for Tarija in I940 with 484

votes. In the more isolated provinces the figures could be more startling.

Thus, for example, the Marxist printer Fernando Sifiani, was elected for the

bleak frontier province of Sud Lipez in 1950 by 79 votes to 24.

What proportion of this electorate were mineworkers? No precise answer

is possible and in any case the politically significant dimension was probably

not so much occupational status as exposure to the influence of the militant



8/35

Miner as Voters 319

and (in 195 i) outlawed Miners' Federation. Thus, for example, unemployed

and retired mineworkers, even those who had left the mining camps alto-

gether, were probably strongly under the influence of their union, as were

many small traders operating in the ambit of the large mining camps.

Workers in the smaller or more isolated mines, on the other hand, might still

be largely untouched by the proselytism of the labour movement. All that the

available statistics enable us to calculate is the proportion of the electorate

located in cities and provinces where union influence was likely to be very

strong, and where a high proportion of the electorate must have been mine-

workers. For example, the cities of Oruro and Potosi between them con-

tributed Io per cent of the total electorate (I2,516 and 8,321 registered

voters respectively). It would be conservative to count at least one quarter of

these as either miners, ex-miners, or close relatives of miners, nearly all of

whom must have been directly exposed to FSTMB propaganda. Turning to

the major mining provinces, the proportion must have been considerably

higher. On a conservative estimate, I conclude that at the national level at

least I5,000 voters must have been fully enrolled members of the Miners'

Federation in 1951. A more generous, but perhaps more realistic, estimate

would be 20,000, and, if former members and close relatives of members of

the union were included, a considerably higher figure would result. In

summary, the Federation had pretty direct influence over the political out-

look of at least 7 per cent of the total electorate, with 10 per cent my own

best guess, and 5 per cent not a very farfetched claim.

It is within this context that one should assess the political influence that

could be exercised by Bolivia's mineworkers once they were organized to cast

their votes as a bloc. Even before the First World War there were at least

half-a-dozen provinces where the local economy was dominated by large-scale

mining activities and where, therefore, the literate element in the labour force

would make up a large proportion of the deputy's electorate. Since most of

the mining provinces were concentrated in the Departments of Potosi and

Oruro (which also contained substantial contingents of mineworkers and

railway employees living in the respective departmental capitals), similar

considerations would presumably affect the electoral calculations of almost a

quarter of Bolivia's senators.

Finally, as I shall demonstrate at the end of this paper, the mining vote

could at times have a significant impact even on the outcome of presidential

elections, above all if it could be mobilized behind a single candidate.

In principle, therefore, the system of representation in pre-revolutionary

Bolivia gave the mineworkers disproportionate influence, by virtue of their

occupational characteristics. For the mining industry concentrated together



9/35


relatively large numbers of adult male wage earners, frequently able at least

to sign their names, into provinces which lacked other modern sources of

employment. It gave them a strong sense of collective solidarity that could be

generalized from individual camps into a nationwide sense of common

identity; it gave them powerful common aspirations and grievances; and it

facilitated collective organization to an extent that was virtually unobtainable

in the rest of Bolivian society. All this coexisted with an electoral system that

disenfranchized the two majority categories of Bolivian society - peasant

cultivators (almost all illiterate), and women (disbarred by custom from

entering a mineshaft) - and that was slanted, by the single member constitu-

ency and the first past the post system, in favour of highly concentrated or

organized minorities of the electorate. But, of course, in pre-revolutionary

Bolivia it was not the electorate which exercised effective power. On the

contrary among the most important elements in the power structure were the

handful of major mining enterprises that became known as the rosca or the

super-estado minero.6

It is, therefore, necessary to examine the informal processes by which the

formal system of representation was 'managed' in favour of the economic

elites.

(ii) The Informal System of Electoral Management

Bolivia is a country of great regional diversity, so that a systematic descrip-

tion of pre-revolutionary electoral management would have to include local

circumstances that varied from the huge, almost unpopulated, Amazon fief-

dom of Suarez Hermanos to the intense provincial rivalries found within

such closed and university-influenced cities as Sucre and Cochabamba.

Here we are concerned with miners as voters, and it is, therefore, the system

of management that operated in the cordillera mining zones that will occupy

our attention. But it should not be forgotten that other forms of elite

domination were experienced in other parts of Bolivia, so that during the

I94ps the parties of the left and the MNR found targets for their revolu-

tionary mobilization on a nationwide scale.

With regard to the mining zones, an early manifestation of the degree of

elite control over the electorate was provided by El Diario on February 26th,

1913:

On the political front, don Sim6n I. Patifio has control over the province of

Bustillo in the Department of Potosi and the province of Huanuni in the Depart-

6 For the rise to political leadership of the mineworkers, see Guillermo Lora, A History

of the Bolivian Labour Movement (1848-I971) (CUP I977), Chapter Four. On the

term 'rosca' see pp. 383-4.



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Miner as Voters 321

ment of Oruro. His control there is sufficient to tip the balance to whatever side

he chooses. In the province of Ayopaya in the Department of Cochabamba a new

and prosperous mining enterprise is being established at Kami which is entirely

owned by Sefior Patifio who... possesses all the elements necessary for electoral

success in that province.7

What were the elements necessary for such success? First, of course, one

must have sufficient dependents resident in the province and eligible to vote.

Consider the example of Bustillo province, mentioned above. In the May

19I4 congressional elections the Liberals (the ruling party, which enjoyed

Patifio's support) received so many votes in this remote and hitherto neglected

province that the opposition Conservatives felt certain they were the victims

of a fraud. Not so, according to the Prefect of Potosi, who pointed out that:

merely in the mining district of Uncia and Llallagua there are a great many

workers, nearly all of whom are literate... according to the latest statistics pro-

vided by the mining firms of Patifio and Llallagua the district has 4,206 persons

employed by the two enterprises, of which 3,894 are of Bolivian nationality.8

He went on to estimate that adding in artisans and urban workers the

adult male workforce in this mining zone probably exceeded 7,000 persons.

Evidently many of them had been registered to vote, and evidently these

voters were thought very susceptible to the preferences of the leading

employer in the area.

Indeed, so large was this contingent of voters that in I9II the Liberal

Party of Potosi had invited Sim6n I. Patifio to stand as its candidate at the

forthcoming senatorial elections. Patifio declined, but his biographer reports

that on May 26th, I 91 he wrote to the manager of the Tupiza branch of the

Banco Mercantil (which he owned):

My lawyer and friend, Dr. Atiliano Aparicio, has launched his candidacy as a

Senator for the Department of Potosi where the elections will be held next

month... I would like you, if it is not too much trouble, to use your influence in

your provinces and work in support of Sr. Aparicio.9

7 El Diario, quoted in Juan Albarracin Millan, El Poder Minero en la Administracion

Liberal (La Paz, 1972), pp. 191-2.

8 Informe del Prefecto (Potosi, June 1914), p. 21. It might be suspected that the Prefect

was exaggerating the extent of literacy among the miners to conceal an electoral

fraud. However, when Heraclio Bonilla examined the company records on 1,447

workers hired at the Peruvian mine of Morococha in I920, he found 65 per cent

classified as able to read, and 69 per cent as able to write. El Minero de los Andes

(Lima, 1974), p. 82.

9 Quoted in Charles Geddes, Patino: The Tin King (London, 1972), p. 121. Aparicio

was duly elected Senator and became a well-known parliamentary spokesman for

Patifio's interests.



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Employees and dependents entitled to vote, and bank managers available

to use their influence with the electorate, each clearly provided useful in-

gredients towards electoral success. However, opponents of the Liberal Party

did not consider these sufficient explanation for the scale of its triumphs.

In the words of Bautista Saavedra when he broke away from the Liberal

Party to join up with opposition Republicans: 'the suffrage has become the

exclusive business of sub-prefects, corregidores and the police'.10 The

question, therefore, arises of how much influence a mining proprietor could

exercise over the sub-prefect of his province. One clue is provided by Patifio's

biographer, who records a letter dated December 20th, 191 o from the mining

magnate to his friend the Minister of Government, recommending a candi-

date to fill the vacant post of sub-prefect of Bustillo province.l Another

indicator is provided by the Prefect of Potosi who, in the report previously

mentioned, observed that one sub-prefect in his jurisdiction had recently

resigned in order to become manager of an important mining enterprise.12

In 1916 the Prefect of Oruro amplified the point, observing that in the

mining zones of Antequera, Avicaya and Totoral it was impossible to find

an inhabitant who was not dependent on the mining companies.

It is impossible to secure independent officials there who will really exercise their

own authority.... No government official can resist the power of the mining

companies, indeed one would be sacked from his post and even thrown out of his

house if he came down against the interests of the mineowners.13

Similarly, it was argued in Congress in 1922 that sub-prefects could not be

expected to arbitrate fairly in mine labour disputes, since the pay of such an

official was a mere 200 bolivianos a month, compared with the double or

more that would be earned by the employee of a mining company. These sub-

prefects 'undoubtedly feel themselves undermined and come to depend not

on the government, but on the patron'.l4

The capacity to mobilize the miners' vote rested, therefore, less with the

governing Liberal Party as such than with the mineowners who perhaps

chose to align themselves with it. Some important mining magnates, such as

the former Conservative President Aniceto Arce, chose to enlist with the

opposition. The same occurred in the case of Carlos Vfctor Aramayo, Patiino's

main competitor in the tin mining sector, who joined the opposition Repub-

licans and, in May I915, duly secured his election as deputy for Sud Chichas

10 Quoted in Albarracin Millan, op. cit., p. 212. 11 Geddes, op. cit., p. 120.

12 Informe del Prefecto, op. cit., p. 9.

I3 Quoted in Albarracin Millan, op. cit., p. 271.

14 Quoted in Redactor de la Hon. Cdmara de Diputados, Tomo VII (La Paz, 1922),

April 4 1922 debate, p. 35.



12/35

Miner as Voters 323

(the province where his mines were located). In this particular instance the

Liberals denounced improper electoral influence by a mining magnate.

It seems possible that the foreign-owned mining companies (like United

Copper Mines of Corocoro, which predominated in the province of Pacajes)

may have been more wary of too direct involvement in Bolivian party politics,

although their capacity for local control can hardly have been very different.

The potential risks were highlighted in the 1917 elections when Aramayo,

campaigning for re-election, was arrested by the Liberal government on the

charge of flouting the authority of the sub-prefect.

Three periods of more genuine electoral freedom can now be considered,

all of which indicated to dominant economic interests the dangerous con-

sequences of allowing representation from any political organizations to

penetrate the socially isolated world of the mining camp. The three periods

are the elections of 1923, 1940 and I944.

After the revolution of July i2th (I920) there was a great working class move-

ment in the mining centres of Oruro; the proletariat believed that the change of

regime provided a good moment for the working class to put forward its demands,

but they were wrong.

The mineworkers of San Jose and the Socabon led the movement, and reached

a satisfactory settlement with the management. . the problem was solved in

under 24 hours, and although the movement contained subversive tendencies

there was no recourse to prefectural authority.

The contract that emerged, as I said, was favourable to the working class; but

unfortunately the capitalists, as ever, tried to evade not only the terms of their

agreement with the workers, but even the very law itself, using their habitual

resources. Thus it was that the miners of Oruro were cheated and the working

class leaders who had negotiated the settlement were thrown out of their jobs.15

Such was the climate of political innovation from 1920 to I923 that

speeches such as this (by a socialist congressman from Oruro in April 1922)

could be heard in the seat of government for the first time. A minority of

congressmen proclaimed their first allegiance was to the labour unions rather

than to the governing (Republican) party, and spoke out vehemently on

behalf of their working class electors. Indeed, there were deputies who went

further, leading them into direct confrontations with the employers. But

although the Republican government had supported trade union organiza-

tion, and was in part relying on the support of lower class electors to

counterbalance the hostility of displaced elite groups, it was in no way

inclined to be led by this minority of socialist deputies. Such prominent mine-

owners as Aniceto Arce and Carlos Victor Aramayo were also associated with

the Republican Party and, even in relation to Patifno, the government's

15 Redactor, op. cit., April i 1922, p. 26.



13/35


intention was to reach an accommodation. The Republicans' problem of

electoral management was, therefore, to prevent the socialists from out-

bidding them for the labour vote, while convincing the mineowners and

other large employers that it was in their best interest to collaborate with a

government dependent on lower class support.

The I923 Elections

The elections of May 1923 demonstrated the near impossibility of containing

the social tensions of the mining camps within the framework of a liberal-

democratic electoral process. One of the first signs in Bustillo province that an

election was under way was the appointment in March and April 1923 of a

new sub-prefect and a new police intendente at Llallagua, both of whom

were willing to listen sympathetically to workers' grievances, and therefore

to curb the normally absolute power of the mining company managers.16

The next development was the creation on May Ist of an independent

regional labour organization based on the provincial capital, but intended to

embrace workers in the adjacent mining camps, the Federacion Obrera

Central de Uncia (FOCU). On May 4th (i.e., two days before the election)

the Minister of Government acknowledged the existence of this new organ-

ization, which noisily supported the intendente and denounced the abuses of

the mine managers. However, on May 8th, two days after the election was

safely completed, the two leading mining companies in the district avowed

that they would not recognize the Federation. Instead a company union was

set up. On May 12th, Patifio's Llallagua company forbade any of its

employees to leave the mining camp, on pain of dismissal, and forbade the

entry on to its premises of all non-employees. Apparently the company

lawyers (one of them himself a member of the Liberal Party) then began

sending cables to the government in La Paz, urging it to outlaw FOCU on

the grounds that under the pretence of being a labour organization it was in

fact preparing a revolution, following the leadership of the Liberal party,

which had just abstained in the previous week's elections.17

With the elections out of the way, the government's priorities evidently

shifted towards reassuring the employees who had felt threatened by the

disruptive forces that a few weeks of political campaigning had unleashed.

By May ist, FOCU claimed, despite the sacking of some of its supporters, to

have recruited I,800 members from among the employees of the two mining

16 The activities of these officials are described in a well documented memoir by the

President of FOCU, Gumercindo Rivera, La Masacre de Uncia (Oruro, I967),

pp. I4ff., 53ff., I52ff.

17 Op. cit., pp. 19, 23, 25, 30, 49, 52.



14/35

Miner as Voters 325

enterprises, and by the end of that month it claimed a total membership

(for the whole Uncia region) of 4,000. Here was a force potentially capable

of dominating the mining zone and overthrowing managerial authority there.

In fact, its significance extended beyond this particular mining zone, for it

was part of a series of local labour Federations operating from the mining

centres of Corocoro, Machacamarca and Oruro, as well as La Paz and major

railway centres. The organizers of FOCU tried to counter the allegation that

they were part of a subversive plot by opposition parties, by vehemently

denying such charges and publicizing their grievances against the mine

management. Help was sought from the deputy elect for Bustillo province,

Pedro N. L6pez. The President of FOCU made a serious effort to reach a

peaceful settlement that would have enabled FOCU to establish itself on a

permanent basis. Instead, the confrontation escalated, until on June 4th the

so-called massacre of Uncia brought to a violent conclusion the first brief

effort at independent trade union organization in the mines which had been

facilitated by the short interlude of electoral campaigning.

Pedro N. L6pez, long an admirer of President Saavedra's advanced views

on labour issues, was re-elected deputy for Bustillo province on May 6th

1923. However, his efforts at compromise only evoked distrust on both sides.

On May 3 st, an agent informed the President that subversion was under way

in the mines and among the peasantry, adding 'perceptibly mixed up in all

this is deputy Pedro N. Lopez, who is sending all kinds of advice through

the post'. On the other side, what the labour organizers remembered about

L6pez was that after the massacre he voted in favour of the state of siege

measures proclaimed on June Ist. 'It is extremely odd that a national repre-

sentative should thus endorse a cruel repression, directed against the very

workers of the districts that he represented. They raised him up with their

votes, convinced that whatever happened their representative would know

how to defend the rights of the working class. How wrong they were '18

Nevertheless, L6pez was re-elected in 1925, and served until I929.

For a generation after 1923 managerial authority was not opposed by

any effective organization in this, or most other, Bolivian mining camps.

Therefore, the best an elected representative could provide for his constituents

was a series of favours and services on an individualistic basis. That, at least,

was the technique adopted by L6pez after the labour repression of I923.

Looking back, in I929, on his parliamentary career, he summarized it as

follows:

Since I became a deputy I have been deeply concerned about the social problems

which became prominent in the affairs of the Republic after the European war.

18 Ibid., p. I54 and p. 6I.



15/35


Therefore, as a legislator I put forward various proposals, commented on others,

and took part in debates on the laws regulating these affairs. As a lawyer I defended

many poor workers without charge, as those who have visited my offices in La Paz

can testify. As a friend of many of them I contributed to the cost of their return

to their homes, or otherwise assisted them. An account of my invariably generous

interventions in successive social conflicts would require a pamphlet all on its

own.19

This was all that was left from the radical euphoria that accompanied the

I920 revolution. Indeed, even this degree of responsiveness to the interests of

the mining electorate was more than could be accommodated by the Bolivian

political system during the early I930S.

The I93I Elections

Despite the illusions initially harboured by some protagonists, the military

coup of 1930 soon proved the opportunity for a resurgence of conservative

forces, all the more determined to contain popular demands because the

economic situation was deteriorating so drastically and the risk of war with

Paraguay could be seen to be advancing.20 Nevertheless, the politicians who

came to power in I930 were identified with the cause of honest and fair

elections. How, then, were the prescribed forms to be observed, while in

practice the lower class majority of the electorate remained demobilized?

An uncontested presidential election seemed the appropriate formula, and

this was agreed by all the main political parties in favour under the new

regime. However, there was more. The Liberals hit on a further device

calculated to reduce participation by the least educated fraction of the

electorate. Before i931, the practice had been for the elector to select a

printed slip, containing the name of his chosen candidate, and seal it in an

envelope. However:

For the elections of January 4th 1931 a new official regulation stipulated that the

voter must write out in long-hand, in a darkened cubicle, the names of the

candidates for whom he wished to cast his vote. This apparently minor alteration

had a concealed political motive: to handicap the voters of the Republican party -

in both of its branches. This party - as it is known - had a popular base of sup-

port, and its numerical strength came from the working class in the cities, and

the peasantry in the provinces. Therefore, among its supporters could be numbered

many voters for whom the action of writing was slow, and perhaps even disagree-

able... By contrast the Liberal party had for twenty years based itself upon the

public employees for whom such voting was straightforward.21

19 Pedro N. Lopez, Mi Labor Parlamentario (Potosi, 1929), p. 33.

20 See L. Whitehead, 'The Impact of the Great Depression in Bolivia'. Proceedings of

the XL International Congress of Americanists (Genoa, I975), Vol. IV.

21 David Avlestequi, Salamanca (La Paz, 1962), Vol. III, p. 245. The Liberal Party

was applying the principles enunciated by its greatest leader, ex-President Ismael



16/35

Miner as Voters 327

Daniel Salamanca was elected president with a mere 38,282 votes cast in

his favour. The Liberals emerged as the largest party in Congress, but the

number of votes cast was the lowest of all twentieth century elections.

With this mandate Salamanca led Bolivia into the depths of the depression

and the morass of the Chaco War.

The 1940 Elections

By the late I930S, however, a painful process of postwar consolidation was

under way, which included the gradual re-emergence of working class

organizations. In the mining zones the outbreak of the Second World War

greatly increased the demand for labour and gave a great impetus to this

process. Thus, the number of full-time workers employed in the major mines

rose from an estimated i6,ooo in I935, to 34,000 in i940, and a peak of

53,000 in I943.22 A breakdown of the figures for December I940 is pro-

vided in Table 2.

TABLE 2

Six miining centres employing over 2,000 workers each

Patino Mines Uncia) 5,444

Unificada de Potosi 4,134

Oruro 2 757

Aramayo Mines Tupiza) 2,55

Huanun 2 385

Huanchaca 2 246

Al above 33 818

Estimated total for all mines 50,000

Source: Max Quiroga Antezana, 'La situaci6n de la clase minera trabajadora

en Bolivia'. Revista Economica (Oruro) Nos. 7/8 July/September 195 I, p. IIo.

Montes, who had told Congress on December 5 1917, 'We have always believed

that Democracy does not involve the illiterate multitudes; that political parties,

whether in government or opposition, are organized to assume the responsibilities of

government and therefore cannot be the thoughtless aggregation of ignorant masses,

rceruited from the depths of society.' Quoted in Porfirio Diaz Machicao, Saavedra

(La Paz, I954), p. 39.

22 Figures for the 1940s from Ricardo Anaya, La Nacionalizacion de las Minas en

Bolivia (La Paz, I952), p. 83. The I935 estimate is based on an official report of

that year, El Estano en Bolivia (La Paz, I936).



17/35


Assuming three dependants per wage earner, it was concluded that

200,000 persons directly depended on the major mines for their livelihood in

1940, and that many more depended indirectly, e.g., as shopkeepers, trans-

port workers, etc., providing services to the mining zone.

The elections of 1940 provided the first significant opportunity for political

organization in the mining zones since 1923. Table 2 shows that the

province of Bustillo (capital Uncfa) remained the leading centre of mining

employment, closely followed by the cities of Potosi and Oruro, and then the

province of Dalence (capital Huanuni). The impact of the mining electorate

can be judged under three headings: the overall presidential campaign; the

party allegiances revealed in the congressional results; and, in more detail

with regard to a specific mining constituency, Bustillo province.

The most influential writer on the political history of this period is almost

certainly Augusto Cespedes, who stood unsuccessfully as MNR candidate for

Bustillo province in 1942, and was elected deputy there in 1944. In his

account of the 940 elections he writes:

Peinaranda's only opponent was J. A. Arze, presidential candidate for the pro-

communist left... whose only object was to impress the foreign centres of

communism by mounting a presidential campaign ... although they did not know

of Arze, the mass of miners voted for him, attracted by the working class slant of

his campaign propaganda.23

Table 3 presents the published presidential results broken down by

department. It shows that over two-thirds of Arze's vote came from the two

mining departments of Oruro and Potosi, where he ran a respectable second

against the official candidate.

It is particularly interesting to consider Arze's vote in Oruro Department

where, according to the official figures, he received the votes of almost 40 per

cent of the registered electorate. In fact, he was initially credited with a lead

over Pefiaranda in that Department (2,587 votes for Arze against 1,663 for

Pefiaranda on March I3th).24 On the basis of these figures it seems rather

questionable whether Arze was as lacking in local organization and support

as Cespedes suggested.

Although the parties of the left were reported to be 'bitterly disappointed'

with the conglessional results, and to be 'indulging in the usual accusations

23 A. Cespedes, El Dictador Suicida (Santiago, 1956), p. 23I.

24 A leading supporter of Arze subsequently claimed that although the official candi-

date inevitably triumphed and was credited with 58,000 (sic) votes, 'we learnt later

that Arze had obtained 37,000 votes... his triumph was significant in such working-

class centres as Potosi, Oruro, Tupiza, Uyuni, etc., although we had not a cent to

pay for propaganda'. Miguel Bonifaz, Bolivia: Frustracion y Destino (Sucre, 1965),

p. 144.



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Miner as Voters 329

TABLE 3

940o Presidential Election

Department Arze Penaranda Bilbao Electorate

Potosi 4 7 6 8 448 366 I9 2 6

Oruro 3 482 5 080 214 9 264

La Paz I 117 19 862 -29 385

Cochabamba 3 1 7 776 1 630 I6 050

Chuquisaca I II7 6 628 - 7 405

Taria 52 4 244 - 6 020

Sana Cruz - 8 057 - i2 738

Ben - 2493 - 4o4

Pando - 3469 538

National 1 366 64 8 6 2 21 10o4 612

Source: La Radon (La Paz) March 3rd I940 and May i5th I940. These results

were described as 'still not quite real' two months after the election. The total

for Pefiaranda exceeds the sum of the column by 382.

of bribery and corruption', they did succeed in electing a few deputies.

The city of Potosi elected two deputies listed in the press as 'communist', and

two 'independents' elected for provinces of Potosi were also, in fact, Marxist

and supporters of Arze's campaign. One of them, Raul Ruiz Gonzalez, was

elected for the mining provinces of Bustillo, with 842 votes.

Undoubtedly, the local organizations supporting Arze's candidacy must

have been weak and incipient compared with the relatively elaborate party

structures that were to develop in a few years. Nevertheless, it should not

be supposed that his movement was operating in a vacuum, or merely trying

to impress a foreign audience. The brief interlude of political freedom

occasioned by the election campaign had enabled Arze to return from exile

in Chile. There was already an organized movement awaiting his leadership.

The Conferencia Nacional de Izquierdas initially resolved on abstention from

the March Ioth elections, but was available to reverse its policy and mount

a lightning campaign once the circumstances seemed propitious, and it had

significant local resources (student enthusiasts and trade union nuclei) avail-

able for sudden mobilization.

The campaign in Bustillo province provides an illustration. In 1940 Raul

Ruiz Gonzalez took advantage of the election campaign to sponsor a miners'

sindicato in Patifio's main fiefdom. He was a former student activist, an



19/35


impecunious schoolteacher and leading member of the Frente Popular de

Potosi. The prospect of obtaining a deputy who would instruct and defend

the sindicato must have contributed to the electoral appeal of Ruiz Gonzalez.

The legal identity of the sindicato was finally recognized by President

Pefiaranda on January Ioth I94I and its founders subsequently recalled their

organizational efforts as follows:

As the result of real struggles against Patifio the Sindicato ... was organised by

determined working class leaders... During this massive endeavour, we always

received determined and disinterested support from Comrade Raul Ruiz Gonzailez,

whose speeches and personal reflections on the importance of sindicatos contri-

buted effectively to the growth of our movement. We are also indebted to him for

the drafting of our statutes and the securing of our legal identity... He has been

a real inspiration to our sindicato, our best defender, and always a calm and

balanced adviser to us.25

Ruiz Gonzalez was a Marxist, and he sought to teach the labour leaders a

Marxist view of society and trade unionism. He stressed that the right to

strike was explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution, and also that it was a

responsibility of the trade union to give a socialist education to its members,

for from the labour movement would develop an entirely new society. It may

be suspected that some of his rather abstract propositions were hard for most

of his audience to grasp.26 However, his suggestions for union organization

(enshrined in the Statutes) had more practical effect. Membership was open

to all manual and clerical workers, not only of Patifio Mines, but also those

employed by any other enterprise in the province of Bustillo, provided they

were over I8 years old, had not been expelled from any other union 'for

betraying the cause of the workers', and were willing to pay whatever

subscription might be fixed by a general assembly of the membership.

(Subscriptions were to be collected fortnightly, but members who became

unemployed would be excused payment). The political significance of the

union was highlighted by the fact that the limits to membership were

defined by the province rather than the company (so that the union might

embrace the largest possible proportion of the constituency electorate) and

that the Secretary-General was obliged to report bi-monthly on the activities

of the union to the local deputy, while the executive committee (of six,

elected by a roll-call of members every two years and only eligible for re-

25 A document dated 1942 quoted in Irineo Pimental, Unidad Sindical y Lucha Por

Mejores Condiciones de Vida (Siglo XX, May 1960), p. 208.

26 An example of his abstract mode of presentation can be found in Ibid., pp. 173-82.

He later became a Professor of Economics and founder in 1950 of the Bolivian

Communist Party. In 1964 he was a leader of the pro-Chinese breakaway movement

which he represented in the People's Assembly in I97I.



20/35

Miner as Voters 331

election in the case of a unanimous vote) was expected to remain 'in

permanent contact' with him.

On the evidence from Bustillo procince, it would seem that the election of

I940 was a major turning point in the political history of the mining work-

force. Conducted in a climate of relative freedom, the election enabled a

Marxist organizer to gain access to a labour force hitherto insulated from

outside political influence by the management's power of local control.

He not only gained access to them but secured his own election and the

establishment of an independent labour organization deeply influenced by his

ideas. The system of electorate management that had, until then, protected

the economic status quo, had apparently broken down. But to some extent

I940 proved a false dawn for the labour movement. It was not until the 1944

election that the fundamental breach would come and then it was not the

Popular Front movement that would inherit the political leadership of the

mining proletariat, but rather their bitter rivals in the nationalist movement

which traced its origin to participation in the Chaco War. What, then, were

the limitations of the 1940 breakthrough?

First, of course, despite his good showing, Arze had not won the presi-

dency. The decisive executive power was firmly in the hands of his opponents.

When Arze requested assurances that the legal rights of his Front would be

respected (May 1940), he was promised full protection 'so long as your

movement remains authentically Bolivian'.27 Arze proceeded to organize a

Congress in Oruro at which his movement was organized into a political

party, the Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (PIR), whose objectives

included the nationalization of the mines. The Congress was due to meet

from July 25th to 30th, but after the first two days had witnessed mounting

violence (allegedly orchestrated by the authorities), all meetings were banned,

a state of siege was proclaimed and 26 leaders (including Arze himself, were

arrested and despatched to a military camp in the Amazon. Most were held

for three months. Thus the relative freedom of the election campaign was

soon followed by a reversion to more normal conditions with most forms of

opposition subject to harassment and repression.

In the mining zones the result was that managerial supremacy was once

again backed up by government support, and any opposition-linked move-

ment that wished to preserve its freedom to organize would have to proceed

with extreme caution to survive. However, for an incipient sindicato,

proceeding with extreme caution would mean low morale and low recruit-

ment of members. Given the public intention to nationalize the mines,

management would remain hostile however moderately the PIR's union

27 Porfirio Diaz Machicao, Pegaranda (La Paz, I950), p. 28.



21/35


wing behaved. In any case, as war-induced employment rapidly increased in

the mining camps, it produced acute social problems of overcrowding and

scarcity, aggravated by inflation. Such social conditions would have provided

an ideal setting for aggressive union organization had not the balance of

national and local power been so adverse to the union organizers. As it was,

by the middle of the war they still had few concrete gains to show for all

their efforts, which helps explain why the mine-workers were so easily won

away from the PIR.

The 1942 Elections

In fact, despite the promising statistics of the I940 election, Arze's movement

had secured no more than a toe-hold in the mining camps before the end

of 1942. In the cities of Potosi and Oruro the largest element in the local

labour movement was the miners' union (with 2,000 and 1,500 members,

respectively reported in 1939), strengthened by the proximity of the mines to

the administrative centres, the railway network and, perhaps most impor-

tantly, to the provincial universities. But in the main mining provinces the

miners' unions were weaker, and almost the only means of access to the

workers was through the local congressmen. On this score the PIR's success

in Bustillo was something of an exception. In Aramayo's old stamping

ground of Sud Chichas a pro-government deputy was elected, and the two

other largest mining camps, Huanuni (Dalence province, Department of

Oruro) and Corocoro (Pacajes province, Department of La Paz), independent

deputies were elected who, although anti-management, opted to align them-

selves in 1942 with the newly organized nationalist MNR rather than the

Marxist PIR. Worst of all for the PIR, despite the support of his sindicato,

in May 1942 Ruiz Gonzalez lost his seat.

There were two rival sindicatos established in the province of Bustillo at

this time (one based on the mining camp of Llallagua and the other on the

nearby ore concentration plant of Catavi). Each supported a different candi-

date. but neither was strong enough to secure the election of its favourite.

In fact a local lawyer supported by Patifio Mines won the seat, with the

MNR candidate, supported by the Catavi sindicato, second, and Ruiz

Gonzalez, backed by the Llallagua sindicato, third.

From early on the MNR and the PIR had adopted radically different

attitudes towards the World War. An Axis victory would not have been

considered by the MNR a tragedy for Bolivian national interests. But for

the PIR the defeat of the Soviet Union would have been a catastrophe for the

international labour movement and the cause of socialism. It followed that

after the collapse of the Nazi-Soviet Pact the strategy of the PIR was guided



22/35

Miner as Voters 333

by two conflicting criteria. On the one hand the Marxists wanted to build up

their organization within Bolivia, for which purpose they needed to champion

popular causes; but at the same time they were determined to help the anti-

Axis cause in every way possible, including restraining strikes that might

impede the flow of war materials and co-operating with anti-fascist business

interests. Unfortunately for them, it was Bolivia's foreign-based mining and

railway companies that were making the country's main contribution to the

Allied war effort. These companies were expanding their output not, of

course, by means of new investment (which was almost impossible in war-

time), but by demanding longer hours and stricter work discipline from their

workers. As a nationalist movement the MNR could make the most of the

workers' grievances against the foreign companies, whereas the PIR's inter-

nationalism compelled restraint. Ruiz Gonzalez ruefully admits the con-

sequences for his support base in Patifio Mines:

It is easy to understand why in such harsh conditions, the workers in the mines

felt a growing hatred of the gringos who worked as managers, engineers and

foremen. With yanquis in positions of command over the workforce some of

them were so disoriented as to sympathise with Nazi Germany, since it was after

all the enemy of the U.S.A. during the war years.28

The I944 Elections

Faced with international hostility, which took the form of six months non-

recognition, combined with internal resistance from the mine-workers and

other threatened economic interests, the Villarroel government was in-

escapably driven to mobilize new bases of popular support. A key target of

its strategy was naturally occupied by the mineworkers, at the peak of their

numerical strength owing to wartime demands for minerals, and better

placed than at any time since the First World War to exert economic pressure

in defence of their living conditions. Furthermore, these living conditions had

in fact deteriorated under the pressures of inflation, overcrowding, and

shortages that accompanied the war. The establishment of the nationwide

FSTMB in June I944 needs to be viewed in the context of this national

situation, so exceptional in its political, its economic, and also in its social

characteristics. The similarities with Peronism naturally attract attention, but

in Bolivia it was a political party allied to the military, the MNR, that took

the lead in mobilizing mass support, rather than a military conspirator as in

the case of Per6n himself.

Although the MNR had been in contact with the Catavi sindicato as early

as 1942, and may have encouraged the intransigence which led to the

28 Raul Ruiz Gonzalez, Bolivia, el Prometeo de los Andes (Buenos Aires, I96I), p. 99.



23/35


massacre, no party had much of an organization there before December 2oth

1943, the date on which Villarroel's faction within the army seized power,

bestowing three ministries on the MNR. The party did not insist on the

Ministry of Labour, and that post went to an independent. It was, however,

interested in nominating militants to positions of influence in local govern-

ment and sought in that way to extend its influence in the mines immedi-

ately after taking office. On the suggestion of Hernan Siles Suazo (deputy

chief of the party), Juan Lechin was appointed sub-prefect of Uncia (a post,

the significance of which has been established in a previous section), and

Luis Pelaez Rioja mayor of Huanuni. Between them they were to create the

FSTMB. Both had joined the MNR before Villarroel took power, at a time

when the party had, at most, a few hundred active members.

Both officials began to use their new positions to curb the authority of the

respective company managers.

Mr. Lechin went and set about two overbearing 'gringos'; he put a halt to the

abuses of authority committed by the company police, and that alone sufficed to

rally the masses immediately behind Lechin and the MNR.29

As for the mayor of Huanuni,

A few days later the President (Villarroel) received a cable from the company

(Patifo Mines) protesting against a fine of 25,000 bolivianos imposed by the

mayor because the scales weighing meat in the company stores were inaccurate.

A majority of members of the new junta regarded this as over-reaction by the

mayor, who should be sacked. I wrote that independent local authorities had been

appointed precisely in order to finish with the habitual frauds perpetrated by the

companies against the workers. The problem was resolved by a disposition

suspending the fine 'on this occasion'.30

These quotations demonstrate the initial caution of the Villarroel govern-

ment and the vulnerability of its radical new appointees in the mining zone.

However, by June 1944 they were ready to convene a founding congress of

the FSTMB, which was held under the auspices of the mayor. A few weeks

beforehand, however, the Minister of the Interior, allegedly under pressure

from the U.S. government's representative, Mr Avra Warren, had begun to

'arrange' congressional elections at which the MNR candidates were to be

defeated (the Party's ministers had been dropped as early as March because

29 Hernan Quiroga, Pirista editor of the Oruro newspaper La Patria (the paper with

most coverage of developments in the mines) speaking in Congress, September 25

1947, quoted in Patino Mines, op. cit., p. 170.

30 Augusto Cespedes, El Presidente Colgado (Buenos Aires, 1966), p. I34. Cespedes

was the MNR's defeated candidate in Bustillo province in 1942. In early 1944 he

was writing for the nationalist La Paz daily La Calle.



24/35

Miner as Voters 335

of their pro-Axis sympathies).31 When the MNR decided to renominate

Augusto Cespedes as their candidate for Bustillo province, 'Lechin received

messages from the government telling him how pleased it would be if this

time the seat was won by mineworkers'.32 Lechin, however, in common

with the other MNR nominees, was uncooperative, and as a result all

civilian prefects and sub-prefects were sacked and replaced by military at the

end of May.

On May 20th I944, Ambassador Warren held a final meeting with

President Villarroel over the terms for U.S. recognition. According to the

Warren Report,

Ambassador Warren was told by Villarroel that he considered the MNR to have

no practical possibility of receiving a majority in the coming elections or of com-

bining with other parties to secure one... The Government is approaching the

July elections with confidence and from present indications will not find it neces-

sary to lean heavily for support on any one party or class but will rather depend

principally on independents elected because of individual reputations rather than

on party labels. It hopes also to receive a good percentage of the labor vote.

Ambassador Warren received the same indication from talks with labor leaders.

The 40,000 members of the worker's federation hold the balance in any Bolivian

election. They give their support to the political group presenting the most

favorable social program. Bolivian politicians remember that in the last general

election only 84,000 ballots were cast out of an estimated total population of three

and one-half millions and consider the labor vote to be the determining factor...

Conversations held during Ambassador Warren's stay in La Paz made it clear,

however, that many working men have confidence in the sincerity of the Villar-

roel regime's pro-labor declarations and that a number of PIR 'regulars' will

support the provisional government. Negotiations have been under way for

mutual support with a wing of the Liberal Party, one of the more conservative of

the old-line groups; ... 3

It was, therefore, by no means a foregone conclusion that the military

government would remain allied to the MNR, nor could that party rely

on its influence in official circles to secure it favourable electoral results.

31 On Avra Warren, see Cole Blasier, 'The United States, Germany and the Bolivian

Revolutionaries, I94I-6', Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 52, No. I,

February 1972, pp. 40-4. However, Blasier does not mention Warren's unsuccessful

attempt to limit the MNR's representation in Congress. According to Victor Paz

Estenssoro (interview, Lima, August I2 1969), much later: 'I had a long conver-

sation with Avra Warren, the American official who negotiated the terms and

conditions for U.S. recognition of the revolutionary government... (including that)

we (the MNR) be expelled from the Cabinet; and that we should not win more than

20 seats in the 1944 election. All the conditions were fulfilled, except the last - the

MNR won more than 50 seats.' (According to other sources, of the I36 seats in the

Constituent Assembly - I09 for deputies and 27 for Senators - the MNR won 66.)

32 Cespedes, op. cit., p. I50.

33 The Warren Report (Washington: National Archives, 824:oo/3i96B).



25/35


Just as the Villarroel government required some form of popular mobilization

as a reinforcement against its internal and external enemies, so the MNR

needed to demonstrate its strength of support in order to retain its influence

with the military regime. The 1944 Congressional elections were thus a

genuine trial of political strength, as important in their own way as elections

in well established democracies. Under the electoral system then in force, the

mineworkers were a decisive proportion of the electorate and it was the

MNR that succeeded, by means of vigorous and possibly even demagogic

campaigning, in garnering the great majority of the mineworkers' support.

By mid-May, the MNR's election campaign was in full swing. On June

Ioth, as the culmination of the MNR's election campaign, came the founding

Congress of the Miners' Federation in Huanuni, attended by delegates from

25 sindicatos, initially claiming to represent 45,000 miners (later in the week

the claim rose to 60,ooo). The new Federation was clearly identified with

the MNR and thus viewed with hostility by the PIR and the unions it con-

trolled. Of the io individuals elected to the Federation's first executive com-

mittee, six (including all the top four) later occupied prominent public

positions by courtesy of the MNR. The Congress proposed various measures

of legislation that would be popular with the labour force (e.g., a refund of

the one per cent that had been deducted from workers' payslips since I936 as

compulsory savings), and demanding polling booths in all mining centres

located more than 50 kilometres from a provincial capital.34

According to the MNR's victorious candidate for Bustillo Province:

On election day my task was to persuade the thousands of unregistered miners

that they could not vote, since they wanted to do so like those registered. In the

plaza of Llallagua they handed me a torch to light a bonfire and burn a puppet

representation of Pefiaranda. I obtained the biggest majority ever registered in

Bolivia under the system of limited suffrage and was almost crushed to death by

the crowds after the count.35

Similarly, in Dalence province (location of the Huanuni mine) the newly

elected General Secretary of the FSTMB, Emilio Carvajal, was elected for

the MNR party by 640 votes, against 340 for an independent and 129 for

the camp's long-established PIR leader. The MNR also won in Inquisivi

(Colquiri mine), and Arque (Kami mine) and captured three out of four seats

in the city of Oruro. All the major mines in the provinces listed above were

owned by Patinio.

84 '60.ooo Obreros de Minas Constituyeron su Federaci6n Sindical', La Calle (La Paz),

June I5 I944.

35 El Presidente Colgado, op. cit., p. 151. In fact Cespedes received 1,547 out of the

1,965 votes recorded.



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Miner as Voters 337

The outcome of the election campaign was essentially to strengthen the

MNR's hold on the national government, thereby providing a stronger base

for it to consolidate mineworkers' support and reinforce the nascent FSTMB.

The outcome also intensified the hostility and resistance of their rivals for

working class support, the PIR.

The MNR claimed much of the credit for the pro-labour measures taken

by the Villarroel government during 1944 and it was the party which in due

course gathered the fruits of those measures. The memoirs of party members

insist that their chief, Paz Estenssoro, was the inspiration behind the scenes,

urging the creation of the FSTMB to counterbalance the power of the

mining companies. The party's Stalinist critics, on the other hand, remember-

ing their recent experiences of imprisonment and intimidation, argued that

trade union freedoms had been suppressed and that a totalitarian form of

labour organization was being imposed on the workers from above, in

disregard of the representative union leadership.

Speaking in Congress on October 23rd I944, Paz Estenssoro sought to

refute the charge that Bolivian workers 'are subjected to forced labour of the

Nazi type'. He reminded the PIR of the labour record of the so-called

'democratic' parties with which they were now allied, and continued:

The MNR admits to total agreement with the PIR on one question of the greatest

importance: trade union freedom. But, to be exact, it is under the present govern-

ment that that freedom has been granted... Is it not under the present govern-

ment that the Miners' Federation has been organised? ... Bolivia's mineworkers

are true proletarians. And it is these mineworkers that the present regime has

requested, and even required, to join sindicatos, so that they will have an effective

instrument for the pursuit of their demands... the congressmen of the MNR,

accompanied by those of the PIR, proposed a similar law in the Congress of I943,

but at that time it failed to pass... owing to opposition from those with whom

the PIR is now allied. . . Furthermore, under the shalter of this revolutionary law

of Fuero Sindical (Trade Union Immunities), sindicatos have been organised in

various mining centres; and I would add that it has been the congressmen of the

MNR, like the Honourable Siles Suazo, who have sponsored these petitions and

assisted the process of legal recognition... What has happened is that the PIR,

with its eye on a very immediate and concrete objective, the coming elections, and

fearful of some persecution which it might suffer after the Revolution, has lost its

sense of historical perspective... its strongly reactionary attitude reflects the fear

that its own programme may be carried into effect by the MNR.36

It was with arguments like this that the MNR succeeded in undermining

the labour base of the rival workers' party. In the mines, where their success

was almost complete, not only debating points were scored. Since the Catavi

86 Victor Paz Estenssoro, Discursos Parlamentarios.



27/35


massacre the MNR had systematically presented itself as the vanguard party

in the struggle against the mineowners, whereas the PIR had vacillated,

partly perhaps because of its 'stage theory' (capitalism needed to develop

further in Bolivia before the social basis for socialism could develop) but

mainly because the mineowners were reliably supplying the Allies with

strategic raw materials. From I944 onwards the MNR not only redoubled

its attacks on the companies and sponsored the formation of trade unions in

the mines. It also encouraged both economic demands and encroachments on

the authority of the mine management, both of which threatened to divert

energies from the task of securing maximum immediate production. This

strategy goes far to explain both the intensity of mineworker mobilization in

favour of radical social change and the intensity of mineowner and Pirista

resistance to such activities.

However, this intensification of class conflict in the mines did not bring

unconditional support from the mineworkers to the MNR. It was the

sindicato whose presence was felt at the work-place and which could claim

direct credit for advantages obtained. By contrast the MNR was in govern-

ment, with a responsibility for maintaining production and, indeed, it

pursued a rather cautious economic policy in order to prepare the country for

the strains of post-war depression. Not everything the party did was under-

stood and approved by the labour force in the mines, and the party, too,

was precariously placed to maintain tight control over its creation, the

FSTMB.

Nevertheless, during the partial renewal of Congress in May I946, the

MNR urgently needed a display of electoral strength in the mines. The

opposition, on the other hand, was made so desperate by the climate of

repression and class conflict that it abstained from the electoral campaign,

devoting its energies instead to the violent overthrow of the Villarroel

government (an objective finally achieved in July I946).

The I946 Elections

Although in national terms the May, I946 mid-term election was a somewhat

irrelevant sideshow compared to the real political struggles of that period, it

is of interest here. It provides the last test of popular mobilization and/or

orchestrated expression of MNR support in the mining camps before the

National Revolution. Although only one third of the seats in the Senate, and

one half in the lower house were up for re-election, it happens that the

mining departments of Oruro and Potosi were both selected for senatorial

campaigns (the MNR won five of the six senatorial vacancies) and deputies

were elected for the mining provinces of Pacajes (Corocoro mine), where an



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Miner as Voters 339

independent was elected; Sud Yungas (La Chojlla mine) and Sud Chichas

(Aramayo's mines), where MNR candidates were elected; and Inquisivi

(Colquiri mine) and Dalence (Huanuni mine) where FSTMB nominees

won, including Juan Lechin, for Huanuni. What these results, in fact, suggest

was that even in the mining zones the MNR's popularity and control over the

electorate was not unconditional. The MNR might prove transient, but the

mineworkers owed their first loyalty to their sindicato and would concen-

trate on trying to preserve the union, rather than the party.

In his report of the results, British Ambassador Rees highlighted the small

proportion of the population eligible to vote and the very low turnout of

those registered, which he attributed to absolute indifference and lack of civic

spirit, 'which defects have greatly favoured the local power politics of a

relatively well-organized and aggressive party like the MNR,' whose success

he attributed to 'their management' of elections in the provinces.37

However, a glance at the identity of those elected deputies with strong

support in the mining provinces casts some doubt on the success of MNR

management even there. In Dalence province the miners of Huanuni cast

1,084 votes for Juan Lechin, defeating the outgoing MNR depu

miners as voters the electoral process in bolivias mining camps

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