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2. Development as Anticommunism: The Targeting of Bolivian Labor
- Cornell University Press
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Before the ink could dry on Bolivia’s Alliance for Progress agreement, internal tensions began to emerge in Washington and La Paz. US conservatives, viewing the Paz regime as repressive and socialist, were the first to question the wisdom of large-scale assistance to the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR; Revolutionary Nationalist Movement). Meanwhile, Paz’s domestic opposition on the right and left fiercely resisted his authoritarian measures, creating an environment of perennial political crisis. From the mines to the cities, supposed beneficiaries of US aid rejected the harsh Alliance for Progress conditions and the Paz government’s accompanying repression. The Kennedy administration had initially adopted development as a tool to combat political unrest, and anti-Paz disturbances only strengthened US liberals’ resolve to deepen Washington’s commitment. For the Alliance for Progress, these crises gave rise to an increasingly authoritarian program, demonstrating clearly the strategic component of development ideology as a form of intervention . The Debate in Washington Despite the enthusiasm with which the Kennedy administration viewed economic and military assistance to the MNR, there was significant resistance in conservative US circles. Viewing revolutionary Bolivia as a leftist authoritarian state, some foreign policy bureaucrats and conservative US press outlets Chapter2 DevelopmentasAnticommunism The Targeting of Bolivian Labor 40 C H A P T E R 2 decried the White House’s rapid incorporation of Bolivia within the nascent Alliance for Progress. The debate between these “realists” and Kennedy’s liberal developmentalists delayed the approval of additional aid money until mid-1962, and it revealed the strategic nature of both sides of the US foreign policy debate. The underlying question, for conservatives and liberals alike, was how best to ensure that Bolivia remained a loyal ally safely beyond the reach of international communism. Almost as soon as the Kennedy administration adopted Bolivia within its Alliance for Progress, the White House asked Congress to authorize the sale of fifty thousand tons of tin from US strategic stockpiles, one-quarter of total world production.1 This affront prompted President Paz to pen a frantic letter to Kennedy, noting that the stockpile sale “does not coincide . . . with the plans of the Alliance for Progress.” Guillermo Bedregal, the president of the Corporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL; Mining Corporation of Bolivia ), told White House aide Richard Goodwin that the sell-off was “in flagrant contradiction” to the Kennedy administration’s developmental goals, adding that he considered it to be “an act of real economic aggression.”2 In a lengthy response on 6 October, which received widespread coverage in the Bolivian press, Kennedy wrote Paz Estenssoro that the Bolivian president should “be assured that my Government retains a deep interest and concern in the rapid development of the Bolivian nation and the economic and social program of the Bolivian people.” Dramatically, Kennedy assured Paz Estenssoro that “we will not take any action—in tin or in any other matter— which will tend to frustrate our mutual goal of a better life for the people of Bolivia” and that Washington would “sell no tin from our stockpile without first consulting with your government.” President Kennedy explained that he was merely seeking congressional authorization for stockpile sales that he would consider only “at a time of world-wide shortage” with the purpose of “discouraging tin consumers from substituting other materials for their normal tin consumption.” Kennedy reiterated to Paz his commitment to “protect the long-term stability and continued prosperity of the tin market.”3 Days before receiving this bold statement of support, Paz wrote two additional letters to President Kennedy. One was private and referred to the June anticommunist crackdown Paz Estenssoro launched in order to gain approval of the Triangular Plan over the strong objections of leftist miners. In order to pass the mine rehabilitation program, Paz revealed that it had been “necessary to seize the communist labor union leaders,” whose opposition threatened to thrust Bolivia “into a period of disorder and anarchy, with the government unable any longer to maintain itself.” Paz wrote that the resulting general D E V E LO P M E N T A S A N T I C O M M U N I S M 41 strike had made it “essential . . . to break up the unity of the labor unions and to separate the masses of workers from the leaders in the service of International Communism.” The Bolivian president explained that he had engaged in “direct negotiations” with urban unions, promising raises for those who broke the...