of the MNR's period in power between 1952 and 1964 was the
splintering of the unity of the party. In its first years
in office, it seemed to be generally accepted that an order
of succession had been worked out among the four leading
figures in the party: Víctor Paz Estenssoro, Hernán Siles,
Walter Guevara Arce, and Juan Lechín. This widely accepted
agreement was fulfilled in the first transfer of the
presidency from Paz Estenssoro to Siles in 1956. However,
with the approach of the 1960 election, the expected
nomination of Walter Guevara Arce as the MNR candidate did
not take place. Rather, Víctor Paz Estenssoro was named
once again, while Guevara Arce broke away to form his own
party, the Partido Revolucionario Auténtico (PRA).

A further split took place in 1964, when it was widely
expected that the labor leader Juan Lechín--who was Paz
Estenssoro's vice president in his second term--would be
the MNR nominee. However, again Victor Paz Estenssoro was
the MNR candidate, leading to a further schism in the
party, with Lechín forming his own party, the Revolutionary
Party of the Nationalist Left (PRIN).

In the end, the dissident MNR factions joined with
General René Barrientos--Paz Estenssoro's vice president
after the 1964 election, and until then head of the
military cell of the MNR--in overthrowing the Paz
Estenssoro government. Paz Estenssoro gives me his version
of that event in some of my discussions with him.

Another factor which undermined the MNR politically in
Paz Estenssoro's second term was his government's program
(known as the Operación Triangular) to rationalize the
operation of the government-owned tin mines administered by
the Corporación Minera Boliviana (COMIBOL). This measure
aroused opposition among the tin miners, who were therefore
eager to support Juan Lechín's defection from the MNR. Paz
Estenssoro comments on his program to rationalize the
operation of COMIBOL in two of my interviews with him.

After a short period of co-presidency of the generals
Barrientos and Ovando, Barrientos was elected president in
1966, with Luís Adolfo Siles as his vice president. Early
in 1969, Barrientos perished in an airplane crash and was
succeeded by his vice president, who was overthrown by
General Ovando, who took over the presidency. However,
Ovando's regime lasted less than a year, when a further
coup, after some confusion, placed General Juan José Torres
in office.

During the year-long Torres government, a wide range of
far-left groups appeared to share much of the
power--including the pro-Moscow and pro-Chinese factions of
the Communist Party, several Trotskyite groups, and
particularly the country's central labor organization, the

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