La Paz's Colonial Specters by Luis Sierra

Author:Luis Sierra [Sierra, Luis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Americas, South America, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781350099180
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

7

Urban Revolution

Indigenous Neighborhoods, the MNR, and Those Three Days in April 1952

Around midnight on April 8, 1952, MNR militants arrived at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés and linked up with student leaders of the youth wing. Armed MNR militants took their stations at predetermined locations in La Paz. In La Paz’s indigenous neighborhoods, MNR militants were tasked with taking control of a small garrison in Caiconi and a weapons depot at the train station in Challapampa. The youth elements of the MNR and workers affiliated with the MNR had two charges: (1) to take the university’s main building and prevent possible reinforcements from the military college south of the city center from entering central La Paz; and (2) to prevent military units stationed in Miraflores, southeast of the city center, from crossing into central La Paz. As the MNR youth made their way to their meeting points, they “pretend[ed] to be groups of young men on their way to serenade [their girlfriends and sweethearts] carrying instruments, singing, joking, and hiding their weapons in the cases of the instruments” to throw “[Police Chief Donato] Millán’s bloodhounds off the scent.”1 According to this account in La Nación from 1955 on the third anniversary of the triumph of the MNR Revolution, “The mothers of the young militants ensured their sons had the weapons they needed by serving as runners and messengers, and not one forgot to give her young nationalist his weapon to fight and possibly die for National Independence.”2 At 4:00 a.m., the student leaders returned to the university and under the direction of Jorge Arze and the “MNR comrades Raul A. Garcia, Carlos Mendizábal, Javier Lorini, Mariano Baptista, Luciano Urquieta, N. Villarroel, Daniel Quiroga, and Enrique Mariaca along with unnamed members of the workers’ movement[,] awaited further instructions.”3 By the early hours of April 9, other party militants had dispersed throughout the city.

In the heavy fighting that followed on April 9, the students, the MNR militants, and other belligerents held off the cadets and military units stationed in Miraflores and in the south of La Paz. Just before daybreak on April 10, when the Lanza Regiment and the Colegio Militar cadets made their way toward the university to attack the belligerents there, “comrade [Hernán] Siles engaged in an emotional farewell with the university students.” The students urged Siles to “go to take charge of the revolution and command it, we will stay here and fight,” promising him that the armed forces of the “feudal-mining order shall not pass.”4 University students and workers defended the university and held it even though they came under heavy fire. On April 9 and 10, MNR militants and residents of indigenous neighborhoods defeated the military units in charge of the garrison and arms depot. This enabled insurgents to reinforce those fighting in other parts of the city. From the mobile insurgents, those who were fighting at the university learned that the depot and garrison in the indigenous neighborhoods had just fallen to the belligerents in Villa Victoria.

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