Word: lech
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...even where to start. He kept repeating his democratic ideals and desires for economic stability. "Bolivia," he insisted, "must keep particularly close relations with the U.S." He talked about disarming both the peasant militia of Paz Estenssoro and the militant tin min ers of Leftist Juan Lechín to avoid fur ther trouble. Yet he allowed Lechín to grab control of all the country's most important unions, bowed even further by promising the unions joint control with management in running the nationalized tin mines. In the past when the miners had such a voice, they...
Siles accused Paz of personalisimo. At election time, Siles joined Juan Lechín, leftist boss of the tin miners, in a hunger strike, hoping to dramatize his thesis that Paz was becoming a dictator. When that failed, he set out to organize an opposition...
...weeks before, Paz's enemies, led by Juan Lechín, leftist boss of the country's tin miners, had withdrawn from the elections, urging all voters to abstain or cast blank ballots in protest. Two days before the vote, Lechín and Hernan Siles Zuazo, onetime President (1956-60) and a former Paz supporter, went on a hunger strike hoping to marshal public opinion against the President. But on voting day, abstentions and blank votes ran only 20% or so, and the hunger strikers soon started eating again...
...best Lechín could do was call his tin miners off the job. By the morning after the election, most of the country's tin production had shut down. Paz coolly shrugged it off. "The strike," he said, "will last only three or four days because the miners don't want to lose their production bonus." Sure enough, three days later, the miners were back...
...Lechín and Siles then announced the formation of a "National Revolution ary Front" to unite most forces, both left and right, in opposition to Paz. If it lasts, the Front will be the first sizable, organized political opposition in Bolivia since the 1952 revolution. But Paz remained unexcited. "I don't believe we are going to have a continuing political problem," he said. Referring to his former political allies, he added: "Some people are necessary for the early part of a revolution, others for a later stage. When the revolution enters the construction period, these people aren...