The Revolutionary Workers' Party (, POR) is a
Trotskyist
Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...
political party
A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...
in
Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
. At its height in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the POR was able to gain a mass
working-class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
following.
History
Beginnings
The POR was founded in December 1935 at a congress in Córdoba,
Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
, called by
Gustavo Navarro and other Bolivian radicals who were in exile because of the
Chaco War
The Chaco War (, [Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...]
, and
Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
respectively. Under the advice of
José Aguirre Gainsborg, the leaders of the new POR affiliated with
Leon Trotsky's International Left Opposition
The International Left Opposition (ILO) was an organisation founded by Leon Trotsky in 1930.
It was meant to be an opposition group within the Comintern, but members of the Comintern were immediately expelled as soon as they joined (or were sus ...
. When the Chaco War ended in 1935, the POR leaders returned to Bolivia. The leaders disagreed over whether to maintain a strict Trotskyist party or form a broad socialist movement.
As Bolivia passed through a series of short-lived
military dictatorship
A military dictatorship, or a military regime, is a type of dictatorship in which Power (social and political), power is held by one or more military officers. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a Polit ...
s, the POR began to enter the emerging
labor movement
The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considere ...
. In 1947 the party's activists formed the
Mining Parliamentary Bloc caucus in the newly formed miners' union (the
FSTMB), which was to become the most active and militant union in Bolivia. Along with the populist
Revolutionary Nationalist Movement
The Revolutionary Nationalist Movement ( , MNR) is a centre-right, conservative political party in Bolivia. It was the leading force behind the Bolivian National Revolution from 1952 to 1964. It influenced much of the country's history since 19 ...
(MNR) it became one of the two most influential parties in the mineworkers' movement. FSTMB president
Juan Lechín
Juan Lechín Oquendo (18 May 1914 – 27 August 2001) was a trade union, labor-union leader and head of the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia, Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers (FSTMB) from 1944 to 1987 and the Central Ob ...
, an MNR member, maintained good relations with the POR. In November 1946, the FSTMB adopted a program known as the "Pulacayo Thesis" that was heavily influenced by the POR's ideology. The Pulacayo thesis was essentially an application of Trotsky's
Transitional Program to Bolivian conditions.
Bolivian National Revolution
After a
military coup nullified the results of the 1951 elections (which gave the MNR a plurality), the MNR, POR and FSTMB led workers' militias that stormed army barracks and forced the
military junta
A military junta () is a system of government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''Junta (governing body), junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the Junta (Peninsular War), national and local junta organized by t ...
to surrender on April 12, 1952. Following the "Bolivian National Revolution," the MNR took over the government, but the populist party failed to enact major social reforms because of pressure from international agencies.
Pablo, the leader of the IS, characterised the MNR as petty-bourgeois. Others have criticised this arguing that the POR was bourgeois.
The POR played a supportive role in the creation of the ''
Central Obrera Boliviana'' (COB), a new federation of
labor unions
A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...
, in 1952. However, when members of the POR began to criticize the moderation of the MNR-led government in October 1952, the MNR removed key POR leaders from the COB and FSTMB. As the MNR's power grew at the cost of the POR, in-fighting increased among the Trotskyists.
In 1954, the POR split into two factions. One of these factions (led by
Guillermo Lora) was opposed to continued work with the MNR. The other faction (led by
Hugo González Moscoso) was less critical of the MNR and sought to work with the left wing of the MNR.
In 1956, Lora founded a separate party (also named POR) that drew supporters of his newspaper, ''Masas''.
1960s to the present
In 1963, a large number of POR members left the party to join Juan Lechín's new
Revolutionary Party of the Nationalist Left (PRIN).
The faction of the POR led by Guillermo Lora continued its activity in the COB and FSTMB during the 1960s and 1970s, when the country was ruled by a series of short-lived military juntas. Lora's POR worked closely with FSTMB president Juan Lechín during these years, when the labor movement largely operated clandestinely. Between 1970 and 1971, when
General Juan José Torres allowed a Popular Assembly (''Asamblea Popular'') to operate, which included unions and was led by Lechín. The POR led forces that sought to keep the assembly independent of Torres. After Torres' overthrow, Lora and other POR leaders went into exile.
In 1988 Lora's POR founded the Liaison Committee for the Reconstruction of the Fourth International together with other Latin American trotskyists.
The wing of the POR led by González Moscoso, which remained the official affiliate of the Trotskyist
Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third Inte ...
, turned to the idea of armed insurrection against the government. Inspired by
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara (14th May 1928 – 9 October 1967) was an Argentines, Argentine Communist revolution, Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, Guerrilla warfare, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and Military theory, military theorist. A majo ...
's
guerrilla
Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...
tactics, they sought to engage in rural combat against the government. The González wing of the POR faced harsh government repression and eventually disappeared.
Lora's POR continues to exist to the present day, though it has been eclipsed by other radical parties such as
Evo Morales
Juan Evo Morales Ayma (; born 26 October 1959) is a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and former cocalero activist who served as the 65th president of Bolivia from 2006 to 2019. Widely regarded as the country's first president to come ...
'
Movement toward Socialism (MAS). It continues to publish ''Masas''.
See also
*
Guillermo Lora
Further reading
*Robert J. Alexander, ''International Trotskyism, 1929-1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement'' (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991).
External links
Official websiteOfficial website of ''Masas'' (paper of the POR)
{{Authority control
1935 establishments in Bolivia
Communist parties in Bolivia
Far-left politics in Bolivia
Political parties established in 1935
Political parties in Bolivia
Trotskyist organisations in Bolivia
Trotskyist parties