The Bolivian Communist Party: challenges of guerrilla and the formation of political alliances

This article is a study of the history of the Communist Party of Bolivia during the most dramatic period for the leftist, revolutionary movement in Latin America, the so-called long 60s. It was a time of direct confrontation between the forces of reaction and progress, a time of intense ideological struggle, of renewal of the left and the search for new forms of struggle. The Communist Party of Bolivia bore the burden of decisions related to the guerilla of E. Che Guevara in their country. The tragic denouement of the Che Guevara epic was the impetus for the revolutionary upsurge in Bolivia, the emergence of progressive military regimes, and the attempt to create popular organs of power, the People's Assembly, in which the protagonism of the Communists was undeniable. This article analyzes the party's policy of choosing allies, ideological concepts of “democracy of the masses” as a period of transition to socialism, and attempts to implement them within the electoral alliance of Popular and Democratic Unity, in which the PCB shared the burden of power in the early 1980s. This unsuccessful experience of the Communist Party's in the power led to a severe internal crisis and the virtual disappearance of the party as an important political actor in Bolivian politics.

PCB, PCB, Bolivia, guerrilla, Che Guevara, electoral alliances, “democracy of the masses”