Bolivian workers face a choice of

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The coming Bolivian elections will see the main bourgeois electoral frontthe Democratic and Popular Unity (UDP)-challenged by a motley crew assembled in the National Revolutionary Alliance (ARN).

This grouping is led by the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), whose head, Victor Paz Estenssoro, was President between 1952 and 1956 and the chief architect of the process of evacuating the 1952 Revolution of almost all its progressive content.

Paz, formerly a supporter of military dictator Banzer and a part-time economics professor in California, in addition to claiming the fealty. of the old party bureaucrats, has managed to entice into his alliance groups as diverse as the Christian Democrats and the Maoists of the Communist Party Marxist Leninist.

The latter party has embarked on a path of flagrant opportunism that outdoes even that of the pro-Moscow Stalinists since the Maoists have established a substantial record of militancy, particularly amongst the peasantry of Santa Cruz.

Paz's alliance, unlike the UDP, is not attempting to drum up jingoist fervour over the question of Chile's annexation of Bolivia's coastline which was lost a hundred years ago this March.

Neither, however, is the ARN succeeding in drawing much support from the working class-at the May Day rally held in La Paz the President of the general workers federation COB -a supporter of Paz, was jeered and barred from speaking.

Hold of reformists

One of the main difficulties facing the parties of the revolutionary left is the tight hold of the reformist bureaucrats over the organisations of the Bolivian proletariat.

The personification of this influential group is Juan Lechin Oquendo, who for a while in the late 40s flirted with Trotskyism and then fled to the MR camp, where he became its 'left' defender through his leadership of the miners' union FSTMB and the COB, which he controiled by means of an efficient bureaucratization.

Since the early 1960s Lechin has led the PRIN (Revolutionary Party of Left Nationalism) which now leads the FRI (Left Revolutionary Front). The FRI failed to make an impact in the 1978 elections and now appears to be falling apart.

Lechin, himseif, however, retains considerable influence over the proletariat and particularly the miners by virtue of his demagogy and "marxist" posturing and his control over the union organisation.

There are three main "Trotskyist' groups in Bolivia. The best known of these is the POR Workers Revolutionary Party) headed by Guillermo Lora which was affiliated to the OCRFI until that organisation's recent crisis.

Lora has been at the forefront of political affairs for over 30 years and was responsible for drawing up the Thesis of Pulacayo (1946) which has long been the central programmatic reference of the working class.

The Lora group has announced that it will fight for a united Anti Imperialist Front candidate in the elections but it is not yet clear how far this plan has progressed.

'Modified Boycott'

In the 1978 elections the party adopted what might best be called a 'modified boycott' by demanding of the regime that in place of putting candidate's name on the ballot papers it should be allowed to insert a short version of its The Vanguardia Obrera (Workers Vanguard) party, led by miners' leader Filemon Escobar, split from the POR several years ago and is severely critical of Lora over his alleged suppression of democratic centralism and assimilation of 'petty bourgeois' elements.

The VO is putting up Escobar as its presidential candidate.

In the last elections the Escobar group supported the candidacy of Domitila de Chungara, the celebrated leader of the Housewives Committee of the Siglo XX mining camp who is not a member of any political party.

The POR (Gonzalez)attached to the USFI-calls Lora's party 'defeatist' and workerist.

It itself wields little influence inside the working class and its politics have been severely prejudiced by its disastrous affiliation with guerrillaism.

The coming elections are in part a concession to the masses.

On the other hand, whilst they provide an immediate means to confront the reformists and the national bourgeoisie they must not become the principal strategic concern of the revolutionary left.

The Bolivian masses have over the last forty years shown themselves time and time again to be capable of concerted resistance and rapid revolutionary mobilisation.

What is now required is a clear revolutionary leadership to direct the extraordinary political strength of the working class.

Without this there can be little doubt that the poll in July will be little more than a Bolivian mıners pirouette through which the bourgeoisie will trip before the return to another Banzer and a further period of abject misery for the people of Bolivia.

The first step must be to stand a workers' candidate committed to a programme which includes the following demands:

*Destruction of the military *Destruction dictatorship!

* Restore all democratic rights!

*A freely elected Constituent Assembly!

*A sliding scale of wages and the fixing of prices in workers' stores!

* Force all workers' parties to break alliances with the national bourgeoisie!

*Workers control mines!

*An end to the military pact!

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SOCIALIST PRESS. Heanesaai io Mar iyi9