Читать книгу The Truman Administration and Bolivia - Glenn J. Dorn - Страница 11

This is one of the profound constitutional contradictions of Bolivian democracy. It cannot have majoritarian government, first because the majority of the Bolivian population is alien to the political life, and second because inside the nucleus of the minority that has political awareness, the majority is in violent divergence with the interests that have in their hands the vital responsibilities of the nation.

—Demetrio Canelas, 5 January 1952

It is true that the salaries and wages that are paid [in Bolivia] cannot furnish employees and workers a standard of living like that of the United States or Argentina because neither from England nor from the United States . . . have we been able to obtain prices that permit adequate increases in these salaries and wages.

—Gabriel Gosálvez, 3 September 1949

In the aftermath of the revolution of 21 July 1946, both the Truman administration and Bolivia’s Provisional Junta of Government optimistically looked forward to a new era of cooperation and mutual understanding. Relief, exuberance, and satisfaction characterized the mood at the State Department. Members of the new junta made the astonishing and extremely unlikely claim that, at the time of the revolution, Major Villarroel “had a mission in Buenos Aires prepared to give way to Perón’s desires, arrange elimination of customs barriers, and assure ‘Anschluss’ with Argentina.” Although more sanguine observers like U.S. diplomat George Messersmith suggested that “anyone who knows the Bolivian attitude on sovereignty realizes that even Villarroel would not have bartered on this point,” U.S. chargé Hector Adam had nonetheless concluded that “there can no longer be any doubt that Bolivia, either through fear of reprisals or genuine willingness,” had “signed up” in a “southern bloc” with Argentina.1 If nothing else, Villarroel’s lynching put to rest any fears that Perón had a puppet in La Paz.

Those fears were replaced with jubilant optimism on the part of newly appointed ambassador Joseph Flack. When a junta headed by former judge Tomás Monje Gutiérrez eventually took control of Bolivia, promising a restoration of democracy, Flack took it upon himself to shepherd that process. The new regime faced impressive obstacles, including revolutionaries it could not control, fear of a MNR counterrevolution, and an Argentine food embargo that threatened to further destabilize an already unstable situation. Although Flack and his superiors did everything in their power to protect and assist the junta, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was not so charitable. Picking up where it had left off, the RFC was determined to undo Bolivian ambassador Victor Andrade’s victory. In other words, the greatest threat to the new regime came not from vengeful peronistas or movimientistas, who were painting the names of the junta’s leaders on lampposts in anticipation of their counterrevolution, but from representatives of the same U.S. government that had pledged its full support.

Restoring Order to Revolutionary Bolivia

Villarroel’s sudden demise and the complete collapse of his government caught the established parties and the political class entirely off guard. In the wake of the army’s complete abandonment of Villarroel, chaos reigned in the streets

of La Paz. Although an informal Tripartite Committee of students, teachers, and workers attempted to restore order to the city, it failed to curb the mob violence: hordes of vengeful paceños descended on the foreign embassies where members of the old regime had taken refuge. Gangs of students besieged the Argentine and Ecuadoran embassies, firing guns into the air and hurling insults at those who were sheltering movimientistas and pro-Villarroel military officers. They even stopped and searched the car of the Peruvian ambassador, whose wife was related to the MNR ex-mayor.2

With the army discredited and confined to the barracks and the police unwilling to take to the streets, the hastily assembled new junta found it impossible to establish control of the nation. Composed largely of men employed directly or indirectly by the tin barons and former officials of the Peñaranda government who had not taken part in the uprising, it had an uphill battle restoring order to La Paz. Respected judge Tomás Monje Gutiérrez was named head of the junta but, for almost a month, was too ill to take charge. Néstor Guillén Olmos and Monje Gutiérrez took limited steps to reestablish control but could not risk either putting uniformed soldiers on the streets or attempting to disarm the revolutionaries. New police officers were issued badges stamped “21” to symbolize their support for the 21 July uprising and to give proof that any semblance of villarroelismo had been purged.3 Responding to a pervasive fear within the diplomatic corps that MNR members would be killed by mobs or arrested rather than exiled, a fear that precluded any prospect of immediate international recognition of the new government, the junta made restoring order and protecting members of the old regime seeking asylum its highest priorities.

For U.S. policy makers, especially Ambassador Flack, the threat of further bloodletting was the only shadow to darken what was otherwise a shining triumph. Flack had arrived in La Paz on the eve of the revolution and had narrowly missed being hit by a stray bullet. This did little to dampen his spirits, however: he immediately proclaimed the revolution to be “an act of pure democracy emanating from the people and accomplished almost entirely with their bare hands,” and believed that it could well produce the “first democratic government in Bolivian history.” He lauded the revolutionaries in the highest terms and believed that the refusal of the masses to turn in their guns actually “had a salutary effect on any ideas which the military may still cherish surreptitiously of eventually trying to retake the government.”4 In short, Flack argued that “democracy’s first steps are apt to be faltering” but “should be supported in every reasonable and decent way by our country.” The tin barons rejoiced as well, expecting “relief from the troublesome labor problems” of the recent past and an end to what they called Villarroel’s “odious labor laws.”5

Still, Ambassador Flack agreed with his diplomatic colleagues in La Paz that recognition had to be withheld until the government allowed MNR members an “unmolested departure to another country” because this would “present a test of Bolivian adherence to existing treaties and the junta’s authority to maintain order.” Despite U.S. hostility toward the MNR, the entire diplomatic corps hoped to avoid the “serious international incident” that the La Paz press seemed to be encouraging through its vilification of Paz Estenssoro and his followers. Although Flack understood that the State Department sought the “gain in good-will” that would accompany swift recognition, he could not “conscientiously recommend” it. The embassies that had granted asylum were depending on the United States for “moral support”; if it granted recognition unconditionally, Flack believed, there would be little reason for the junta to protect those embassies from vigilante justice or to permit the safe departure of MNR members.6

Early in August, Assistant Secretary of State Braden candidly explained the U.S. position to the new Bolivian ambassador, Ricardo Martínez Vargas, his longtime friend and a former member of Patiño’s board of directors: the State Department, though “favorably impressed by the composition and declared objectives of the junta” and desiring to aid and extend recognition to it, could not do so until both “adequate police control in La Paz” was established and the asylum situation was resolved. Martínez Vargas countered by suggesting that any “genuine, unanimous popular uprising of the people” was bound to “result in a strong demand that ‘criminals be brought to justice’ ” but agreed to impress upon the junta that “its good name abroad” and recognition could not be “disconnected” from the treatment of those seeking asylum.7 Monje eventually relented despite his desire to see the supporters of Villarroel tried and punished. Under pressure from both Buenos Aires and Washington, members of the junta approached the Tripartite Committee and apparently asked that it respect the sanctity of embassies. The students agreed and went so far as to act as embassy guards; they were even given soldiers to command.8

For Ambassador Flack and the State Department, this was “unequivocal evidence” of the junta’s authority and a “great credit” to its members. Indeed, Flack believed that this “commendable demonstration of authority” was also

a sufficient pretext for the United States to accord immediate recognition, which would create a “distinctly favorable psychological moment . . . beneficial to the junta in the maintenance of public order.” President Truman agreed. Monje and the junta continued to pleasantly surprise the Truman administration, by allowing MNR members to go into exile, by calling elections for the beginning of 1947, and what was perhaps most significant, by announcing on 11 October that none of their number would run for office, guaranteeing at least a modicum of impartiality.9

To support the new regime, U.S. diplomats found themselves at odds with their counterparts in La Paz, especially the Brazilians, who “had asked that we go slow, mainly for the purpose of not encouraging revolutions and the spilling of so much blood.” Indeed, weeks after U.S. recognition was secured, it became clear the junta’s control over even La Paz was far from complete. On 27 September, Luis Oblitas, a deranged young ex–army officer, burst into the Palacio Quemado brandishing a gun and threatened to kill Monje. According to Time, “the President, unbuttoning his vest and spreading his arms,” told Oblitas, “Fire. I am here by the will of the people.” When Oblitas hesitated, he was immediately arrested by the police. A mob quickly formed, seized the soldier, and hanged him from a lamppost in the Plaza Murillo; Monje and his compatriots were reduced to the role of “spectators.” Not content, the mob then stormed a prison and seized Major Jorge Enguino and Captain José Escobar, the officers accused of perpetrating the 1944 Oruro executions. After each being given a bottle of Coca-Cola, they were shot and then also hanged from the lampposts. In the words of Mesa Gisbert, “no authority impeded this new aberration.”10 In seeking quick recognition to bolster the return of liberal constitutional oligarchy, the State Department had, in the end, cared little about the degree of control the junta actually had.

Nonetheless, recognition did pave the way for emergency food shipments, military sales, and the final ratification of Ambassador Andrade’s tin contract—all of which would strengthen the authority of the new government. Ambassador Flack had done what he could to ensure that the oligarchs of the junta and not the popular forces of the Tripartite Committee gained legitimacy and control over La Paz and the nation. While he was exuberantly hailing the newly recognized government as an “irreparable blow” to the “formation of an anti–United States bloc so dear to Perón’s heart,” his superiors were acting to ensure that postrevolutionary Bolivia did not succumb to counterrevolution or Argentine pressure.11

Although U.S. nonrecognition of the new government had been as benign, supportive, and short as it could be, initial signs suggested that the Argentines were taking advantage of the transition period “by creating a food crisis” and “general economic chaos,” either to foment a counterrevolution or simply to avenge Villarroel. Immediately after the revolution, Bolivian diplomats in Buenos Aires reported rumors that Peronists might “besiege” Bolivia “through hunger.” In the next weeks, Argentine food shipments to Bolivia did indeed drop “off sharply” and ceased altogether on 7 August, for fear of “uprisings of miners and Indians,” according to Argentine diplomats, but there was far more to the story.12 Later in August, Peronists closed the border with Bolivia entirely and stopped issuing export permits; this created a “critical situation” that was “worsen[ing] by the day.” In the most notorious case, Argentine customs officials turned back twelve rail cars of wheat bound for Bolivia. Bolivian diplomats first concluded that these steps were part of a concerted Argentine policy until Perón’s foreign minister convinced at least some of them that Argentina was simply following the U.S. lead on nonrecognition.13

As the situation became “much more grave” by the day, however, the Bolivian chargé in Buenos Aires, Ernesto Daza Ondarza, seems to have spent every waking moment trying to ascertain the real reason critically needed food was not crossing the border. Periodic shortfalls in Argentine grain and meat shipments to Bolivia were nothing new; these had grown more pronounced toward the end of the war. Now, however, Argentine diplomats were placing blame for the recent “suspension of transport to Bolivia . . . exclusively [on] the grave transportation problem from which Argentina suffer[ed].” Several officials pointed to a shortage of rolling stock; others suggested that a recent sixty-day campaign to reduce the cost of living in Argentina was draining off food originally destined for export to other South American nations. One railway official taking this view told the chargé that nothing could be done without a direct order from Perón’s cabinet. The director general of transportation explained that Argentine railways had deteriorated and that the line into Bolivia was in “the poorest condition of all the rail lines in Argentina.” He assured Daza Ondarza, however, that he would contact Perón to obtain permission to ship “all that Bolivia needs.” Perón apparently responded with an order that “special preference” was to be given to rail shipments bound, not for Bolivia, but for export overseas to Europe.14

When Chargé Daza Ondarza approached Argentine customs officials, they expressed surprise that wheat and meat were being held up at the border, noting that only certain minor products were subject to export prohibitions. They directed him to Minister of Industry and Commerce Rolando Lagomarsino, who could reopen the border with a stroke of the pen. Lagomarsino, in a manner Daza Ondarza described as “Florentine,” claimed to be “very surprised” at this “new development” and directly contradicted the customs officials. Such contradictions and apparently deliberate obfuscations supported the thesis that the Argentines were simply applying pressure on the junta, but it remained unclear toward what end. As the State Department noted wryly: Perón had “Bolivia over a barrel” but was “nimble” and “adroit enough to put on, from all outward appearances, an irreproachable front.”15

After weeks of bureaucratic runaround and deepening shortages, Chargé Daza Ondarza believed he had finally discovered the real source of the problem. Well aware of Peronist “sympathy with the fallen government” and the daily “attacks on the Bolivian revolution” that appeared in the peronista press organs, he had long suspected “political factors.” And, indeed, after giving him yet another recitation of the sad state of Argentine railways and yet another round of “assurances and promises,” a deputy minister of foreign affairs asked Daza Ondarza “about those seeking asylum.” When the Bolivian responded by asking whether this was not the “essence of the question” and the “cause of his nation’s difficulties,” the Argentine diplomat “could not conceal a rather suggestive smile.”16 Although the State Department’s sudden decision to recognize the new government had forced the Argentines to abandon nonrecognition as a tool to guarantee the safe evacuation of MNR members, they had apparently opted for another form of pressure.

In all likelihood, the Peronists’ concern for the MNR refugees went well beyond simple humanitarianism or respect for international law; they considered them to be the only Bolivian faction who “could respond to our overtures for the formation of a bloc” against the “Yanqui and Brazilian imperialisms aligned against us.” Because most MNR members, including Paz Estenssoro himself, were seeking refuge in Buenos Aires, the potential for intrigue was virtually unlimited. Although other Bolivian diplomats attributed at least some blame for the food crisis to the inefficiency of the new Peronist trade monopoly and noted that other nations had suffered from it as well, this did nothing to change the fact that the “normalization of exports” from Argentina would “not be possible in the short term.”17

What the Peronists failed to take into account, however, was the State Department’s strong desire to see the Monje junta prosper. Over the course of 1945 and 1946, U.S. diplomats had discovered that “Argentina normally eases its policies on supplies quite readily after it discovers that we are willing to take care of its neighbors’ food needs.” Because U.S. diplomats urgently sought to strengthen the new government and Braden was receptive to any means by which any Argentine venture could be countered, this was the perfect opportunity. Indeed, State Department officers had been planning for this contingency since before the revolution, and Assistant Secretary Braden pledged that he would meet Bolivia’s “minimum requirements” of food. In fact, he “was already making arrangements to do so” in mid-August, when the first Bolivian request arrived.18 His superiors immediately authorized the shipment of twenty-four thousand tons of flour, and promised more to come. In October, the United States shipped eight thousand tons of wheat as well as an additional nine thousand tons of flour by rail from Chile; Ambassador Martínez Vargas confidently informed his superiors that he could obtain another eight thousand tons of U.S. wheat in November. For the Bolivians, the lesson was clear, and one they would exploit for years. Because the United States would provide wheat and flour to counter a Peronist embargo and ease a “critical and dangerous economic and political situation,” Bolivian diplomats could use the promise of U.S. aid to secure lower prices from the Argentines and, in turn, lower prices from the North Americans as well.19

Once the State Department announced that it would meet Bolivia’s needs and Monje declared that the MNR exiles would be given safe transit out of Bolivia, the Argentines lifted their “virtual blockade” almost immediately.20 Although the new Bolivian chargé in Buenos Aires was obliged to run almost exactly the same gauntlet of Argentine functionaries in October that Daza Ondarza had run in August, he was greeted with “a spirit of cooperation that translated into the immediate dispatch of export permits.” When queried by U.S. diplomats, Bolivian statesmen reported no complaints at the end of October and attributed the “reversal of Argentina’s position solely to United States expressions of aid, which have, in effect, nullified Argentina’s economic pressure.”21 At least one U.S. official was convinced that Daza Ondarza had for months “failed to bring Bolivia’s problems to the attention of the proper Argentine representatives,” but this had clearly not been the case. Although the Peronist motivations remained somewhat unclear, one MNR leader suggested that the Argentines had been “pointing a gun at the head of Bolivia” to remind it that “it could not afford the luxury of an anti-Argentine policy” at a time when mobs in La Paz were chanting, “Perón, to the lamppost!”22

In the end, both U.S. and Argentine diplomats had applied pressure, albeit of a much different character, to protect Paz Estenssoro and the MNR refugees. When Paz Estenssoro finally arrived in Argentina in November, he admitted that “he owed his life” to the leaders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Mexico, who had insisted on Bolivia’s “firm” adherence to the principles of political asylum. He did not include Ambassador Flack or the Truman administration among his saviors, for swift U.S. recognition of the junta had, if anything, endangered him and his colleagues. Thoroughly unrepentant, Paz Estenssoro reaffirmed his support for Villarroel, whose work had been “so barbarously interrupted by the Bradenist plutocracy,” denounced Monje as a figurehead for “vampires who suck the blood of the Bolivian people,” and lamented that his homeland was now “completely asphyxiated by the overwhelming pressure of the oligarchic and plutocratic tentacles.”23 As MNR members dispersed, some fleeing to Argentina and others going underground in Bolivia, to plot their response and to reorganize in the mines, Monje and the junta had passed their first test and survived their first challenges.

With Bolivia’s international relations reestablished and normalized, the junta’s primary task was to pave the way for a restoration of constitutional rule by holding elections for the presidency, the Senate, and the Chamber of Deputies. The MNR was naturally prohibited from participating, which ensured that the competition would be among the various parties making up the Frente Democrático Antifascista. Although the election of March 1947 was, on one level, notable for the civility and relative harmony that accompanied it, on another, it was a harbinger of the factional infighting that would cripple the governments of the sexenio. Unified only by hatred and fear of the movimientistas, the FDA had brought together the Marxist Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, the rightist Liberal Party, bastion of the landed aristocracy, and the more moderate Socialist Republican, Genuine Republican, and Socialist Parties into a united front against Villarroel. Dropping “Antifascista” from its name, the Frente Democrático hoped to present a single slate of candidates who would restore unity to Bolivia. This hope would be dashed, however, by the ambitions of José Antonio Arze and his PIR.

The piristas seem to have believed, with some merit, that the moment had finally arrived for them to ascend to power. Theirs was the one remaining party that, through its influence in the mining, industrial, and railway unions, had anything resembling a mass constituency. Indeed, what organized support the 21 July revolution had enjoyed had come almost exclusively from PIR cells in the student federations and unions in La Paz. With the MNR being driven out of the mining camps, the piristas had every reason to believe they would be able to fill the void and finally achieve a dominant position among the working class. Explicitly Marxist in orientation since its founding in 1940, the PIR advocated a reasonably thorough reform of Bolivian society through a “12 Point” agenda that called for a centralized economy, women’s suffrage, education reform, the elimination of illiteracy, and “action against imperialism, feudalism, and Nazi-Fascism.” Notably, it was able to coexist with the landed elite because it did not call for immediate land reform or liberation of the indigenous masses and with the tin barons because it did not call for immediate nationalization of their properties.24 Confident in its own strength, however, the PIR was unwilling to sacrifice its agenda to the more conservative parties of the Frente Democrático: its defection destroyed whatever consensus may have existed in the postwar period.

Pan-American Union official Ernesto Galarza offered a different version of the breakup of the Frente. According to Galarza, the PIR was effectively purged from the FDA when the “political marriage of the Rosca and the PIR proved to be a shot-gun wedding with a hangman’s honeymoon.” Although the piristas had great strength in the Tripartite Committee, the junta quickly supplanted and then disbanded the committee. Further, Monje’s success in disarming the newly armed paceños dealt a direct blow to the PIR’s ability to threaten the regime or launch a “second workers’ revolution.” José Arze and his followers were gradually eliminated from their positions in the junta and denied the representation they believed they deserved on councils and electoral slates; they came under increasing fire from the tin barons’ newspapers.25 Even though the other parties blamed the dissolution of the Frente Democrático on the PIR, Galarza’s version of events has considerable merit.

The PIR was not the only party to defect from the Frente Democrático: other defections quickly followed. When the Republicans and Socialists forged a coalition, the Partido de la Unión Republicana Socialista (PURS), to fill the void left by the PIR’s departure, the Liberals made a bold move to block their old rivals, suggesting that Monje be named president by acclamation. And when Monje turned down the nomination, the Liberal Party announced its intention to run its own slate of candidates against the PURS. Ironically, this most reactionary and elitist of the major parties found itself thrust into an anti-PURS coalition with the Marxist PIR, a coalition that chose the politically moderate Luis Guachalla to be its presidential candidate.26

For its part, the PURS nominated physician Enrique Hertzog Garaizábal, one of the original founders of the FDA, a Chaco War veteran, and a bureaucrat who had held a variety of cabinet posts throughout the 1930s. His Genuine Republicans, generally regarded as the most conservative and pro-rosca of the parties making up the PURS, also boasted the largest membership. The Socialists and Waldo Belmonte Pool’s Socialist Republicans introduced a spirit of tentative reform to the PURS platform. With the MNR outlawed and the PIR taking a backseat in the presidential campaign, the election of 1947 bore a distinct resemblance to the old intra-elite contests of the 1920s and 1930s between the Liberals and Republicans. Just months after what “experienced observers” considered the “bloodiest” revolution in the nation’s history, Bolivian politics had degenerated to little more than prewar personalism.27

Although deemed to be a clean election by almost all sides, the contest could be considered democratic only in the loosest possible sense of the word. The electorate was composed of fewer than one hundred thousand upper- and middle-class men of European or mestizo descent. That this 3 percent of the population was also the group with the least interest in meaningful reform or any major transformation of the status quo virtually guaranteed a bland campaign. Indeed, both Guachalla and Hertzog clearly represented the old, stagnant order, and both promised only modest reform. So similar were the candidates in their political views that they published a number of joint statements during the campaign on the major issues confronting postrevolutionary Bolivia. Indeed, Guachalla would later become an instrumental member of several of Hertzog’s cabinets.28 The only party that could have interjected anything resembling a genuine call for national rejuvenation, the Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria, inexplicably refused to enter the fray.

Why the PIR, at the apparent apogee of its political popularity, chose to adopt such a low profile remains something of a mystery. U.S. diplomats suggested several explanations for José Arze’s tentative approach. On the one hand, the piristas were occupied by the formidable task of recapturing the “consciences of the mine workers put to sleep by the Nazi Villarroel demagoguery.” On the other, Arze might also have determined that a concerted move for the presidency by the PIR would bring the violently anti-Communist and historically anti-PIR army out of its barracks in response. Until the party had consolidated its position fully within the working class, such a move might be premature, not only because of the military’s hostility, but also because the oligarchy might easily extend its repression of the MNR to the “Communists” of the PIR. Even as Arze concentrated on winning over junior officers and securing a majority in Congress, he understood all too well that the entrenched leadership of the military would not countenance a pirista government and that his best hope lay in supporting and working through Guachalla and the Liberals, whose government the piristas could presumably dominate.29

The United States and the Cold War might also have been on Arze’s mind. The PIR leadership was nervous, unjustifiably it turned out, about the U.S. reaction to a pirista government. Indeed, Arze’s lieutenant, Ricardo Anaya, approached Ambassador Flack in early August to broach this very subject. Anaya believed that there was “strong feeling against the PIR in the United States” because of the party’s “presumed Leftist orientation” and feared that U.S. aid would be “cut off” if it came to power. Even though opponents of the PIR routinely branded it “Communist,” however, Flack did not; for him, the party was, at worst, “perhaps slightly tinged with pink.”30 After poring through countless FBI reports, the ambassador had concluded that Arze, Anaya, and their fellow piristas, despite effusive praise for Soviet Communism and frequent rhetoric denouncing imperialistic capitalism, were “generally friendly to the United States.” Indeed, Arze, who had worked for Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of Inter-American Affairs while in exile during the war, publicly professed his “admiration and affection” for the United States and understood that, “without the frank aid of the U.S., Bolivia could not raise its economic level.”31 Flack estimated that the PIR had the support of more than 80 percent of the electorate and predicted that, in the coming elections, “the PIR will get a working majority” in Congress and “the next President of the Republic will be a man who takes Arze’s orders.” Confident that the PIR was neither “a Communist organization” nor “likely to develop into one,” Flack welcomed the party’s ascension to power. Indeed, he reassured his superiors that a PIR victory would “presage a period of harmonious United States–Bolivian relations.”32

Ultimately, lukewarm PIR support was not enough to carry Guachalla to the presidency on 5 January. Of the nearly ninety-three thousand total votes cast, Hertzog won by a margin of fewer than four hundred votes, and with that tenuous mandate, the PURS coalition assumed national leadership. Although Paz Estenssoro predictably denounced the elections as “fixed,” most U.S. and Latin American witnesses could only laud them as the “purest and most extraordinary in the memory of the country.” The incoming president immediately sought to assemble a government of national unity by inviting not only Guachalla but also the PIR into his cabinet.33

As the traditional parties divided the spoils of their victory, the MNR was forced into a major reassessment. One faction, led by Rafael Otazo, argued for moderation and an eventual peaceful reentry into Bolivian politics. Paz Estenssoro, however, argued that only through revolution could the old order be overturned, and, if anything, the example of Villarroel proved that a barracks coup would not suffice. Paz Estenssoro’s path required a more militant agenda and a much closer alliance with radicalized mine workers. If the MNR saw alliance with the unions as a means to co-opt them, the unions viewed it as an opportunity to infiltrate a political party. Juan Lechín became, at this point, an even more important figure than Paz Estenssoro. With one foot in the MNR and the other in the FSTMB, Lechín was in many ways the link between the intellectuals in exile and the masses in the mines and streets. While the MNR brought organization and a path to power to the workers, the workers transformed the party from a small, tightly knit upper-class venture into a true multiclass mass organization. It would be years, however, before this strategy bore fruit, and, until then, the old parties and the PIR would have national politics to themselves.34

In the end, U.S. policy makers could hardly have been more pleased with Bolivian developments since the 1946 revolution. The State Department’s highest priority was the elimination of MNR influence, and every party now meaningfully represented in the executive and legislative branches of government was thoroughly committed to keeping Paz Estenssoro in Buenos Aires, or at least out of La Paz. Moreover, the Liberals, spearheading the opposition, had a vested interest in eradicating the economic nationalism that characterized the MNR. Not even the inclusion of the PIR in Hertzog’s cabinet soured Cold War Washington on the new government. Ambassador Flack reminded his superiors that, despite the PIR’s “clenched fist symbol” and a program that “at least roughly parallel[ed] that of the Communists,” there was “no evidence to prove any direct connection between the PIR and Soviet Communism.” Indeed, he asserted, “at the present time there is no Soviet Communism in Bolivia worthy of serious consideration.”35 Because the PIR had more to lose than any other party if the MNR did return to power, the State Department was easily able to find common ground with the closest thing Bolivia had to Communism. Liberal constitutional oligarchy was alive and well.

The 1947 Tin Contract