Rodolfo Saldaña joined with Ernesto Che Guevara, one of the central leaders of the Cuban revolution, in the 1966-67 revolutionary front that Guevara led in Bolivia. Che was captured and assassinated by U.S.-trained Bolivian army forces in October 1967.

In last week's issue, the Militant reprinted the introduction to the book by Waters along with excerpts from the book. In those excerpts, Saldaña described the 1952 popular upsurge through which working people won the nationalization of the largest mines, the initiation of land reform, and elimination of the literacy requirement that had disenfranchised the indigenous majority; the class struggle in the early and mid-1960s that created "fertile ground" for revolutionary struggle; and the response by miners, students, and others in Bolivia to the guerrilla led by Guevara.

Fertile Ground is scheduled to be released in February simultaneously with a Spanish-language edition by the Cuban publishing house Editora Política. The two editions will be launched together at a special event during the Havana International Book Fair, to be held February 2–10.

Subheadings and footnotes are in the original. Copyright © 2001 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.  
 

Saldaña: Well, my first political struggles began when I entered high school. I was always on the side of the revolutionary forces.

Question: What year was this?

Saldaña: In 1947 I began high school in the city of Sucre. In 1946 there was a popular insurrection against the government of Villarroel. Villarroel was hanged from a lamppost in La Paz, together with one of his followers.¹

Question: What was the nature of his regime?

Saldaña: Villarroel was a military man. His government was considered connected to Argentina, sympathetic to Germany in the Second World War. He was also accused of being tied to Getulio Vargas in Brazil.² His government tried to take advantage of the interimperialist conflict in the international arena. So there was some connection to the Brazilian government in the era of the Second World War, some connection to Germany. At the same time, there was, to a certain degree, an easing of U.S. pressure, to try to keep the country on its side.

This was the period of the antifascist popular fronts, and the strongest party with popular support was the PIR. I was not a member of the PIR, but I was in street demonstrations, and I used to be there throwing stones.

Question: The PIR was the ...?

Saldaña: Partido de la Izquierda Revolucionaria [Party of the Revolutionary Left], which later gave rise to the Communist Party. Many people who were in the PIR left to form the Communist Party.³

By 1952 the MNR [Revolutionary Nationalist Movement] had become the standard-bearer of the nationalization of the mines, of the agrarian reform, which had been the slogans of the PIR. The MNR came to power in 1952.

In 1950 the Communist Party was formed primarily by young people who had been members of the PIR. At that time I was living in La Paz. I participated in some actions, strikes that ended in confrontations, in massacres. That was when I began my political life, in the CP. This was in 1950. I was practically a founding member.  
 
Becoming a miner
A student leader in the early 1950s, Saldaña was sent to Chile to attend a conference of the World Federation of Democratic Youth. Before returning he traveled to Brazil and Moscow. In the mid-1950s, as a leader of university students, he was active in fighting the efforts by the MNR government to take over the universities and abolish their autonomy.  
 

That was how we decided we had to begin in the mines. We identified the most important mines in the country at the time: Siglo XX, which had around 6,000 workers, the largest mine on the continent at that time; Potosí; and Pulacayo.

At first we did what had always been done. A leader would travel, meet with some people who belonged to the party or wanted to belong to the party, a cell would be formed, the comrade who had attended the first meeting would leave, and then nothing would happen after that. And once again we would have the same situation.

So three comrades went to these three mines to stay there about a month, find the people, meet with them, and organize the party.

But we reached the conclusion this wasn't enough. We would go, assuming we could hit all three, hold four meetings with people we had met with many times, explain the situation, and then once again the thing would evaporate. The only way to guarantee that the party would be organized for real was for us, the three of us, to enter the mines. That was how I became a miner at Siglo XX.

We also determined that we had to go inside the mines themselves, not remain outside of it in other sections, but to go into the very center of the mine. And so I became a miner.

The section I entered, which was made up of young men, was the specimen section. These are miners who go around in groups taking samples from the unmined locations and take them to the laboratory to determine what quantity of mineral there is. This was a mobile group. One day they would work here, the next day there, and the following day somewhere else. It was an ideal situation to make contact with a lot of people.

At first the specimen section had around 200 workers. Eventually the majority of the miners there became members of the party; they formed their cell and held meetings. That was where we recruited Rosendo García Maisman.

So now the party existed. Then we pointed out that the party had to expand within the mine, and we said that people should transfer to different sections of the mine. But people did not want to move. In order to have the others do so, I had to set the example, and I went to the most difficult section, Block Caving.

There the amount of space was very small, and there was a lot of dust. A lot of dynamite was used, there were many explosions. In short, the work was very tough, very difficult. There are people who get silicosis after three months. Their lungs are destroyed. That's where I went.

García Maisman went to one section. And the same with other comrades, who transferred to different sections. Then the party encompassed much more. It wasn't just the specimen section, but we had party groups in other sections.

Question: What years did you work there?

Saldaña: From 1955 until 1958.

As one might expect, I left Block Caving in very bad health. At the end of 1958 I returned to La Paz. At that time I was a member of the Central Committee.  
 
Support to Peru, Argentina
In the early 1960s Saldaña participated in support work for guerrilla fronts trying to establish themselves in Argentina and Peru.

In late 1963 a guerrilla front was opened in Argentina, under the leadership of Jorge Ricardo Masetti, who worked under Che's direction. Masetti was an Argentine journalist who had traveled to the Sierra Maestra in Cuba in 1958, and became a supporter of the Cuban revolution. After its victory, he moved to Cuba, where he helped found the news agency Prensa Latina. Logistical support to the guerrillas in Argentina was organized from Bolivia, with the participation of Bolivian CP members. Also involved in the support work was Abelardo Colomé Ibarra (Furry), today a corps general of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and Cuba's minister of the interior. The Argentine guerrillas were routed by the military in early 1964. Masetti and most of his comrades were killed.

Saldaña spoke about his experience.  
 

Question: When you say the "south"...?

Saldaña: I'm referring to Argentina. Masetti.

Question: What about Peru? Were you also involved in supporting the guerrillas there?

Saldaña: There too.

Question: Were you involved in supporting the movement of Puerto Maldonado in Peru?

Saldaña: Yes. All their equipment passed through my hands. I amassed and stored it, preparing it for shipment. My tasks were run out of my repair shop, above all for the business of the south. Many things were needed, and I helped resolve the problem of packing the material for shipment. We would utilize false bottoms; for example, we would take a barrel of oil, remove the lid and fill it with items on the bottom, and cover it up again, soldering it over and putting oil on top. When the items reached their destination, they were opened up with a chisel and everything was taken out....  
 
Bolivia through 1971
In the four years after Che and his comrades fell in battle, Bolivia was rocked by momentous class battles. Dictator René Barrientos was killed in a helicopter crash in April 1969. His successor, Luis Adolfo Siles Salinas, was overthrown in a coup by Alfredo Ovando, the army chief of staff, in September. Under pressure from intensifying popular struggles, Ovando's regime adopted measures opposed by the bourgeois and military forces most closely allied with U.S. interests. These forces organized a coup to oust Ovando in October 1970. Bolivian workers took to the streets and defeated the coup attempt. Juan José Torres, another officer, assumed power. A second attempted right-wing coup in January 1971 was also defeated through the mobilization of the toilers. Riding the wave of these mass mobilizations, Bolivian working people formed a Popular Assembly, an incipient workers parliament, in February. Following months of wavering and indecision by workers leaders, military forces led by Hugo Bánzer overthrew the Torres government in August 1971 and unleashed a wave of murderous repression.  
 

The Ovando government nationalized Gulf Oil, which not long before had begun operations in Bolivia.⁴ A whole series of U.S. imperialism's organs, like the Peace Corps, were thrown out of the country. Some of the CIA's operations were dismantled, like its phone-tapping center in La Paz. The U.S. military mission, which had its base in the area and was known as "little Guantánamo,"⁵ was shut down in this period.

My view at the time was that the measures being adopted by the Ovando government did not have the unanimous support of the state apparatus, including the armed forces. While some elements were pushing to take another road, the apparatus of Barrientos was still intact. I predicted that the government's days were numbered. In addition, there was the weight of the United States rulers, who were decisive in Bolivia's situation; they could not be in agreement with Ovando's course.

So first they kicked some of the ministers out, and after that the government of Ovando went. Later, Juan José Torres came to power. Torres had been removed from command of the army. He was appointed president amidst a great popular upsurge, supported by a large majority of workers and peasants and others, plus a sector of the military. And he remained in power for one year, until the coup d'état in 1971, when Bánzer assumed power.

Looking at the governments of Ovando and of Torres shows us to what extent the guerrilla effort had an impact on the class struggle in the entire country, including affecting the armed forces itself....  
 
The struggle continues
Saldaña was arrested in 1970, following the end of the revolutionary campaign originated by Guevara. After his release later that year, he went to Cuba, where he stayed for 12 years, working in a factory, studying sociology and working for Radio Havana, Cuba, making broadcasts in Quechua to Bolivia. In 1983 he returned to Bolivia, where he taught the history of political thought at the university.  
 

So in 1990 I decided to return and occupy my modest position, in the trench of defending socialism, of defending Cuba. I am here in my small trench, at a radio station where I have a regular program, and at InterPress Service, a third-world news agency.

But the attack on Cuba has not taken place, and I don't think it will. None of the enemy's predictions with respect to Cuba have been fulfilled. They have set various timetables. First it was a matter of months before Cuba fell, then within a year. Now more than ever, Cuba is rebuilding its economy. It has contacts, relations with many countries. In the United States itself there is interest in negotiating, in investing in Cuba, but the Helms-Burton Law and all the other anti-Cuban, antihuman measures do not permit it. Nevertheless Cuba moves forward, and the struggle continues.  
 

1.Bolivia's president during the latter part of World War II, Gualberto Villarroel was hanged by a crowd in front of the presidential palace in La Paz on July 21, 1946.

2.Getulio Vargas held power in Brazil from 1937 to 1945.

3.There was no Communist Party in Bolivia prior to World War II. In the 1930s, supporters of the Communist International functioned in the union movement and were part of the Frente de Izquierda (Bolivian Left Front), which in 1940 joined in forming the PIR. In 1952, following the revolution in Bolivia that same year, the PIR formally dissolved.

4.Under the Barrientos regime, Gulf Oil's share of Bolivia's oil production rose from 3 percent in 1964 to 82 percent in 1967.

5.The U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay in southeastern Cuba has been occupied against the wishes of the Cuban people since the beginning of the twentieth century.  
 
 
  Contribute to Books for Cuba Fund
 
In preparation for the Havana International Book Fair, which will be held February 2-10, the Militant has launched an appeal for contributions to the Books for Cuba Fund.

Since the third such fair in 1986, Pathfinder supporters have had a booth displaying books and pamphlets at the biannual event, which in 2001 is becoming yearly. During the fairs, requests for Pathfinder titles have been made by students, workers, soldiers, librarians, teachers, and others. In response to the political interest in these titles, donations of books have been made to libraries and other cultural institutions in Cuba.

To make these and other book donations possible, the Militant for a number of years has organized a Books for Cuba Fund, to which working people in the United States and elsewhere have contributed thousands of dollars.

To help prepare for book donations during the 2001 Havana book fair, you can contribute to this international effort. Checks or money orders earmarked "Books for Cuba Fund" can be sent to the Militant at 410 West Street, New York, NY 10014.  
 
 
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