Bolivia: Man in the Middle

Boliva: Man in the Middle "Bolivia is ungovernable," a La Paz businessman recently remarked. "And that seems to be just the way Bolivians like it." Since 1825, when Simon Bolivar defeated the Spanish and declared independence, Bolivia has had 186 coups d'etat, an average of more than one per year. Its current President, General Juan Jose Torres, 50, came to power last October after a series of coups and countercoups that even for Bolivia was high comic opera. While President Alfredo Ovando Candia and his army chief engaged in a bloodless quarrel over who should run the country, Torres quietly mustered air force and popular support, sent a small squadron of planes to fire a few bursts over the presidential palace, walked in and took over.

"Bolivia is part of the revolutionary Third World," Torres declared from the palace balcony in the shadow of Mount II-limani in La Paz. Pledging to struggle against "colonialism and imperialism," he promised that the state would take over rights to natural resources and "strategic sectors of the economy."

Though students and workers have never been fond of the military, they liked what they heard, and quickly supported Torres' revolution. Now they are threatening to take it over entirely.

Popular Gesture. In his nine months in office, Torres has moved to accommodate the miners, the strongest labor union in Bolivia, by raising their wages 20% overall. He purged his officer corps of suspected troublemakers and suppressed an attempted coup by right-wing military officers. His most popular gesture came on the eve of May Day, when he announced that Bolivia was canceling its 20-year contract under which the U.S. Steel Corp. and Philipp Brothers, a New York mineral trading firm, operated the large Matilde lead and zinc mine on Lake Titicaca. Torres promised to return a fair measure of the $12 million the companies say they have invested.

It was not the first time Bolivia had resorted to nationalizing industries. In 1952, President Victor Paz Estenssoro expropriated the big tin companies; in 1969, General Ovando's regime nationalized the Gulf Oil holdings. But that tactic almost invariably creates problems for the government. Because of the Gulf takeover, the regime had to postpone work on a gas transmission line to Argentina for lack of financing, ending at least for the time being a potentially profitable venture. More important, it has frightened off business investors. The only private foreign investment in the last two years was a $500,000 contract signed by W.R. Grace for car and tractor service stations.

People's Courts. "We are a popular government," says Torres, "and we will not use violence or repression, but persuasion." His problem may be that he is not sufficiently persuasive. He lacks any semblance of solid support in the form of a political party. He is buffeted by rightist army factions and leftist student radicals, and it remains questionable how long he can hold out.

Earlier this month, 221 delegates from labor unions, student groups and other political factions calling themselves the Popular Assembly met for a ten-day session in the National Congress Building. (Congress has not convened since 1969.) After electing powerful Mine Leader Juan Lechin Oquendo as its president, the Assembly made it plain that it fully intends to play Congress to Torres' President. It passed resolutions demanding the establishment of "people's courts" to investigate political crimes, urging the expulsion of all U.S. military and intelligence personnel, and calling for worker representation in the management of the state-owned tin mines.

Though the Assembly does include a number of extremist proSoviet, pro-Chinese and pro-Cuban student factions, which attack each other regularly, it also represents more moderate labor groups, which wield considerable power among Bolivia's 5,000,000 people. As a result, Torres may well yield to at least some of its demands. If he does not, a general strike--or even coup No. 187 --is conceivable.

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