[Marxism] Re: Marxism Digest, Vol 15, Issue 40

["Robert H. Jackson" <academicanarchist@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Let me elaborate more on the neo-liberalism of the MNR. If you look at their
platform in 1952, and in previous presidential election in the 1940s, they
stole the ideas of other parties, particularly the Bolivian Socialist Party.
The PSB first advocated agrarian reform in the 1920s, and the MNR took it
for themselves to help mobilize support in the countryside. It must not be
forgotten that one wing of the MNR, that came to power with Villarroel in
1943, were accused of being fascists by the United States. Of course, the
fact that the new Bolivian government wanted to increase tin prices on
shipments to the U.S. may also have had something to do with this. The truth
is that the MNR was dragged yelling and screaming to agrarian reform by the
peasant leagues themselves, that organized land invasions in the months
leading up to the declaration of agrarian reform in 1953 at Uclarena, in
Cochabamba. The other factor at play, and of course this also involved the
tin miners, is that the peasant league members, and membership in peasant
leagues increased rapidly after the MNR coup in 1952, had guns, and were the
ones that really ran the countryside until the Tolata massacre in 1978. To
give you an idea of the level of mobilization, during the 1960 presidential
election there was a mini-civil war called the Cliza-Uclarena War, that
involved two neighboring peasant leagues backing rival MNR candidates.
During the course of the conflict they built trenches, put up barbed wire,
and had machine guns. Robert Jackson
>

_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism