Monday, May. 29, 1950

The Revolt that Failed

The lid blew off La Paz last week for the first time since the bloody 1946 revolution in which the capital's citizens hanged their dictator from a lamppost. This time the capital's schoolteachers touched off the explosion by demanding higher pay to offset the government's recent currency devaluation. Within hours, a raging mob was surging through the streets denouncing Conservative President Mamerto Urriolagoitia (pronounced ooreo-la-goytcha).

All the dissident elements in Bolivia--Socialists, Communists, Trotskyites, members of the pro-fascist Movement of National Revolution--dropped mutual hates to back the teachers. Rail, bank, factory and transport unions joined in to make it a general strike.

The government rushed up two army battalions from the provinces. Police brought out their tear gas. After routing Communist-led student rioters from a university-building strongpoint, government forces advanced into the northern working-class districts. There the rioters fought stubbornly with small hand grenades made of cement, scrap iron and dynamite, apparently brought from the tin mines. Finally the army, firing a few mortar shells, drove the rioters into the hills rimming La Paz.

Having failed to rouse the citizens of La Paz to fight as they did in 1946, the rebels surrendered. Probably 50 had been killed, over 200 wounded in the fighting. Among 400 prisoners were leaders of the Bolivian Confederation of Labor and Sergio Almaraz, the leading Bolivian Communist. At week's end the schoolteachers accepted a flat 10% pay raise (they had originally asked for a sliding scale ranging up to 70%), and the general strike seemed to be broken.

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