The triumph of the proimperialist coup d'etat—initiated by remote control and coordinated by direct representatives of American imperialism, and led by its principal local agents—represents a tactical defeat for the working masses in Bolivia. But this is not the end of the civil war; rather, it is only the open beginning. Out of a nascent and intermittent civil war, Bolivia now passes over to open and permanent civil war.
The Fourth International salutes the Bolivian workers and students who have fallen in combat against Colonel Banzer's coup d'etat. Their memory will henceforth be associated with that of all the revolutionists who have fallen on Bolivian soil for the cause of socialism, and particularly with the memory of the most illustrious among them, Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
Bolivia is one of the most sensitive spots on the Latin American continent, where the class struggle is taking on ever more violent forms. Although it has some of the greatest mineral wealth, Bolivia's masses are among the poorest of the poor in Latin America. Bolivia throughout its history has known nothing but a nearly uninterrupted succession of governmental overturns. The Barrientos military dictatorship, and then that of Ovando, were toppled by the action of the masses. But with the struggle lacking any consistent political leadership, another military officer took power. General Torres readily employed a leftist vocabulary, but he took not a single decisive measure. He obviously left the army intact and in particular retained, as chief of the Military College, Colonel Banzer, who used that position above all to organize coups d'etat.
Under mass pressure a "People's Assembly" was created, without any real power at its disposal. To be sure, a large sector of this assembly leaned to the left and sought a socialist Bolivia. But it lacked a strong revolutionary leadership enjoying mass recognition. This assembly displayed more indecisiveness than capacity to inspire and lead the Bolivian masses. Thus when it demanded equal workers' representation in the management of the nationalized tin industry, when it demanded that the Torres government recognize Cuba, when the first attempts at revolutionary organization appeared inside the army itself, the reactionary forces supported by Yankee imperialism precipitated the coup d'etat before a revolutionary leadership could begin to emerge.
Today we find united under the baton of Colonel Banzer the MNR [Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario—Revolutionary Nationalist Movement] of Paz Estenssoro, which, as the beneficiary of the 1952 revolution, used its power to liquidate the gains of that revolution; and the FSB [Falange Socialista Boliviana—Bolivian Socialist Phalanx], an organization avowedly fascist in character. During the coup d'etat, the Brazilian army kept the Bolivian frontier under "surveillance," thereby offering proof of its role of principal stand-in for imperialist counterrevolution on the South American continent.
The Bolivian experience confirms the correctness of the analysis stressed time and again by the Fourth International, according to which explosive social tensions and the restricted economic resources of capitalism provide no durable base for a regime of reformist type in most Latin American countries. Such a regime is only compatible, for a certain period, with passivity on the part of the masses. As soon as the latter go into motion and step beyond their conciliatory leaderships, both old and new, there is only one basic choice. Either the revolutionary process moves forward to the seizure of power by the proletariat in alliance with the poor peasantry, above all through the destruction of the bourgeois army and the bourgeoisie's entire repressive state apparatus, or else the latter will establish a repressive military dictatorship, with the army remaining more than ever as the ultimate stable bourgeois "party" in Latin America.
The Bolivian experience bears out the illusory character of all conceptions that hope a vigorous mass upsurge might, solely through its breadth and strength, hold in check the appetites of the "gorillas" in Latin America. If such a mass movement doesn't understand the imperious need to prepare itself for armed confrontation with the bourgeoisie, for arming itself and disarming reaction, it will be driven back and wiped out in a moment by violence, as happened once again to the mass movement in Bolivia.
History will record the merits of our comrades in the POR [Partido Obrero Revolucionario—Revolutionary Workers party], Bolivian section of the Fourth International, who insisted, in opposition to the Lechín-style opportunists, to the pro-Moscow CP, and to the Lora centrists who took part in leading the labor movement and thereby share the blame for the swift defeat, on the immediate need to arm the workers, poor peasants, and students, pointing out that a military coup d'etat was inevitable and imminent. In opposition to this clear line borne out completely by events, the official labor movement leaders counterposed illusions in General Torres who, when the time was ripe, would surely arm the workers; they counterposed spontanéist notions to the effect that the workers would surely be able to obtain arms when they were ready for armed struggle; and they counterposed Platonic resolutions demanding . . . that the army arm the workers! All this led up to the August massacre in which makeshift militias, armed with old rifles and lacking any preparation or training whatsoever, stood heroically against the tanks and planes of the counterrevolutionary officers.
Again this time, Bolivian reaction will quickly prove incapable of solving a single one of the problems afflicting Bolivia. And already the revolutionary vanguard, especially our comrades of the POR (Bolivian section of the Fourth International), the ELN [Ejército de Liberación Nacional—National Liberation Army], the Zamora wing of the pro-Chinese CP, and others, are continuing the struggle by organizing guerrilla war. This trial has been costly to the Bolivian masses, but it cannot help but raise future battles to a higher military and political level.
Colonel Banzer's coup d'etat will serve not only as a lesson to Bolivia's exploited masses. It should also serve henceforth as a lesson to the masses of Peru, where we also find supposedly "reformist" left-wing officers at the head of the government. It should serve as a lesson to the masses of Chile, where plots are undoubtedly being hatched in the barracks to put an end to Allende's so very legalist experiment. It should serve as a lesson to the militants and masses of Uruguay, who are in danger of being taken in by parliamentarist illusions in the "Frente Amplio" [Broad Front], to the militiants and masses of Argentina, whom the Peronist reformists seek to dazzle with the promise of "liberating" elections in 1973. Within the context of the social and political convulsions shaking the Latin American continent, the most dangerous political force Yankee imperialism and the indigenous bourgeoisies have at their disposal is the army, which is insensitive to democratic notions and parliamentarism and which carries out its politics with planes and tanks, even against the universities—as just happened in La Paz.
Against this power, the masses of the Latin American continent can only guarantee their liberation and the victory of socialism by relying solely on their own class forces, by organizing for long-term struggles involving confrontations with the repressive forces aimed at destroying them, by forging the instrument of victory, the revolutionary proletarian party.
The Fourth International calls on the workers of the entire world to show their solidarity with the Bolivian workers, peasants, and students against the repression of Colonel Banzer's government, to help them prepare for their coming battles aimed at overthrowing the new military dictatorship and establishing a socialist Bolivia, springboard to a Socialist United States of Latin America.