Word: lechin
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...miners in a desperate effort to trade them for two left-wing union leaders held for a long string of crimes. But more than the arrest of the two union leaders was involved: the miners were in open defiance of the government in La Paz. And their leader, Juan Lechin, 50, Bolivia's far-leftist Vice President, was using their grievances as a defiant bid for power against Victor Paz Estenssoro, Bolivia's constitutional President, who intends to run for re-election next...
...Both Lechin and Paz are members of Bolivia's ruling M.N.R. Party, and together they plotted the 1952 revolution that toppled the country's feudal tin-mining aristocracy. But once in power, Paz and Lechin swiftly became bitter rivals. As Minister of Mines, Lechin, who is part Arab and part Indian, styled himself a "Trotskyite Communist," turned the 40,000-man miners' union into his private militia, and proceeded to featherbed the nationalized mines with 6,000 unneeded workers. The miners called him "El Maestro"-but the once profitable mines became a shambles, losing money...
...dispatch said the agreement reached Saturday night between La Paz and Lechin had not been well received in some sectors in the catavi-Siglo Veinte mining area...
Terms for the release of the prisoners were worked out by leftist vice-President Juan Lechin and Paz last night. Lechin agreed to order the release of the hostages if the government would release on bond the two union leaders and move their trial La Paz to Catavi...
There was a possibility of a hitch, however. A dispatch from Catavi said the miners were awaiting arrival in Catavi of Lechin, before turing over the hostages...