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As crises continued to threaten Bolivia’s political orientation in the early 1960s, US liberals sought to reassure President Paz and deepen their commitment to his repressive, modernizing regime. Communism in Bolivia, both domestic and international, drove an increasingly heavy-handed policy of thoroughgoing intervention in Bolivia’s internal affairs, elegantly articulated through a development discourse. While Cuban-sponsored guerrilla activity unnerved Washington, US policymakers were more immediately concerned by the possibility of a political takeover by the semiautonomous Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (MNR; Revolutionary Nationalist Movement) Left Sector, headed by Vice President and miners’ federation leader Juan Lechín. To face down this threat, US officials would rely extensively on the Bolivian armed forces to carry out the development enterprise. In mid1963 , the CIA also entered the country in full force, charged with shoring up MNR moderates under President Paz and ridding leftism from Bolivian society. These policies took the form of military-led development in the countryside and militarized development in the mining camps. Given the aggressive nature by which US liberals intervened and the sheer quantity of military hardware the Kennedy administration was sending, it was only a matter of time before Bolivian blood would be shed in the name of the Alliance for Progress. Chapter3 “BitterMedicine” Military Civic Action and the Battle of Irupata 68 C H A P T E R 3 Communism in Revolutionary Bolivia The Kennedy administration supported authoritarian development in Bolivia in order to wage war against communism, but the battle lines in the country’s revolutionary environment were far from clear. The heterogeneous governing party, which the State Department occasionally referred to as the “Marxistoriented MNR,”1 displayed a troubling toleration of communism, both domestic and international, and members of the Communist Party and the MNR Left Sector were given free rein to cooperate with Cuban-backed guerrilla movements targeting neighboring Peru and Argentina. Indeed, in the early 1960s the Cuban Embassy operated with nearly total impunity in La Paz, and Havana returned the favor by muting its disagreements with the MNR regime. Meanwhile, alternating between double-dealing and thinly veiled blackmail, President Paz employed the communist threat to secure ever-higher levels of US support. The phenomenon of communism in revolutionary Bolivia is complex.2 In exchange for Communist Party endorsements in his 1951 and 1960 presidential contests, Paz Estenssoro had generally eschewed political repression against the Partido Comunista de Bolivia (PCB; Communist Party of Bolivia).3 In return, the Communist Party forswore insurgent activity against his government . According to Central Committee member Ramiro Otero, the PCB’s decision in 1960 to offer Paz “conditional support” reflected its position of “employing only political pressure toward his government” as long as Paz respected the party’s legal status. José Luis Cueto, editor of the PCB weekly Unidad, also stresses the importance of maintaining their freedom of operation . “Above all, we had to protect the Party’s legality,” Cueto recalls, conceding that this fixation led PCB leadership to accept a “cynically complicit coexistence with the MNR.”4 Moreover, Marxism was hardly restricted to the PCB and Trotskyist Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR; Revolutionary Workers’ Party). The MNR Youth faction represented one of Bolivia’s strongest pro-Cuba organizations, and there were many Leftists in the governing party, including Vice President Lechín, a former POR member; Marxist political scientist René Zavaleta; exPCB intellectual Sergio Almaraz; and former POR labor activist Edwin Möller. President Paz sought to neutralize domestic communism through mutual toleration and, in the case of the MNR Left, through co-optation.5 Unfortunately for Paz, one of the earliest effects of the Alliance for Progress was the “ B I T T E R M E D I C I N E ” 69 radicalization of the Bolivian Left, both inside and outside the governing party, which began to distance itself from his regime. In mid-1961, a large group of MNR Youth leaders condemned Paz for rounding up Bolivian Communists in order to ram the Triangular Plan through the miners’ federation. The crackdown “fills us with shame,” they wrote, adding that Paz’s actions “bring dishonor to the party, and not just that, they also bring dishonor to the country .” Explaining that they were officially resigning from the governing party, the MNR Youth declared that “communism is in the just demand of the workers who cannot live on starvation wages; it is in the demands for better social conditions; it is in the condemnation of the wicked sale of...

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