The author was carrying out thesis research in a Bolivian mining community last summer when a military coup occurred.

On the morning of July 17, 1980, reports arrived in La Paz, Bolivia that a military uprising had taken place in Trinidad, a departmental capital east of La Paz. The military in Trinidad demanded that the Armed Forces take charge of the government. Bolivia's National Committee for the Defense of Democracy (CONADE) called an emergency meeting in La Paz and ordered a general strike and road blockades in protest. At noon, before that meeting had ended, ambulances arrived at the meeting place and heavily armed paramilitary personnel jumped out, broke in, and arrested everyone present. Several, most notably Marcelo Quiroga Santa Cruz, the Socialist president candidate, were killed on the spot.

Two Bolivian University students who attended the meeting and subsequently escaped compiled a written description of the events. An excerpt describes Quiroga's assassination:

When we arrived to the ground floor, one of the fascists recognized Marcelo Quiroga and ordered that the others move on and that Quiroga be led to another room. Obviously, they had orders to kill him then and there, and wanted to do it without witnesses. Marcelo objected to being separated and grabbed the banister. It took two men to pull him away, but as they were doing so, another shot Quiroga at point black range in the chest with a submachine gun . . .

That afternoon the Armed Forces occupied the city of La Paz, closed the University and took numerous political prisoners; the count soon reached 2000. A few hours later the Constitutional president, Lydia Gueiler, abandoned the government and General Luis Garcia Meza, commander of the Army, assumed the Presidency.

In Viloco, a mining community of 4000 inhabitants, both miners and campesinos had been anxiously awaiting the fulfillment of the previous month's democratic elections in which Hernan Siles Zuazo, a center-left candidate, had won a clear plurality. Zuazo was to be inaugurated August 6. When news of the military coup reached Viloco, the response was swift and unanimous. The miners' union called a general strike and formed a 12-member steering committee to coordinate the resistance. The committee included representatives of miners, their wives and relavaderos, Marginal workers not formally hired by the mining company. Action was taken immediately to block the road to Viloco and groups were assigned to stand guard to give warning if the military approached.

Later that day Radio Viloco called a meeting for the next morning in Curawara, the central hamlet of the valley. The approximately 5000 campesinos of this region speak Aymara, an Indian language, as a first language. They save a portion of their agricultural produce for their own consumption and carry the rest to Viloco and to La Paz for sale in the urban markets.

At the meeting in Curawara, a resistance committee for the valley was formed and the first decision made was that no agricultural produce would leave for La Paz, in keeping with the strike and blockades called by CONADE. They also decided to suspend sports events and observance of religious holidays that would detract from the efforts at hand. Then the assembly addressed the question of security. The campesinos were assigned to guard the lower valley, the only alternative entrance to Viloco. Each community was responsible for providing 15 men for a 24 hour shift. Women stepped forward and asked what they could do to contribute. The assembly decided that women would not be involved directly in combat, but would help by making weapons, preparing and distributing food, and caring for the wounded. "Civil War" and "the enemy" were the terms used in reference to the imminent conflict.

Though arms and ammunition were scarce everywhere, miners managed to take dynamite from the mining company, and they distributed it carefully to each community. A campesino experienced in guerilla warfare demonstrated the production of grenades using a half stick of dynamite, tin cans, and scraps of metal and glass. Another man showed the group how to make Molotov cocktails, filling glass bottles with gasoline and old rags. These homemade weapons and an occasional rifle left over from the '52 revolution were all the people had to defend themselves. In return for the dynamite, the campesinos agreed to provide food to the miners as supplies ran low.

Radio Viloco was crucial to these organizing efforts in the countryside, and also was the only means of communication among mining centers. At 10:00 each evening. Radio Viloco and seven other miners' radios formed a network in order to exchange news and messages of solidarity. On July 18, the network reported that one nearby radio station had been occupied, that another had been strafed by the air force, and that a military offensive in the town of Huanuni had been repulsed by miners and peasants. The next morning a meeting in the countryside was interrupted by a special report. Someone turned up the radio: miners and campesinos crowded around as the network announced that Radio Huanuni had fallen and that the town was occupied. There was a hush in the group, a mixture of fear and anger.

By the fourth day of the coup, the military still had not entered Viloco. In part, this reflects the community's strategic location. Unlike the largest mines. Huanuni and Catavi, the winding mountainous road to Viloco is easily protected and the town's location in a ring of hills makes bombing and strafing from the air very difficult. In addition, Viloco is a smaller mine, and according to official statistics has been losing money for many years; Huanuni, on the other hand, was a primary target because it is one of the few profitable nationalized mines.

Despite these factors, everyone in Viloco knew that it was only a matter of time before they would be attacked. I left Viloco on the morning of July 20, upon notice that military were coming. No one in the town had slept the previous night. Men mobilized commandos to reinforce the entrance point, and a group of women surrounded the radio, holding only a Bolivian flag in their defense. The atmosphere was unbearably tense; all were aware that they could not last long in battle, and that once the town was occupied, the military repression would be brutal.

Nor would this be the first time that the Bolivian military has occupied the mines and forced people back to work. Miners have a history of violent confrontations with the military which intensified beginning in the 1940s when the miners' union was first formed. Major mines were nationalized in 1952, and pressure from miners working for the state-owned enterprise (COMIBOL) led to other left-leaning reforms by the new government. In the mid-1960s a foreign financed "rehabilitation" plan phased out miners' participation in COMIBOL's management, but it took a series of massacres by the military government of Barrientos to impose this change.

Right-wing forces cannot rid themselves of the political pressures from miners because mineral production has such importance in the Bolivian economy. Although miners represent only 3 per cent of Bolivia's workforce, mining provides the Bolivian government with 60 per cent of its official foreign exchange. Most recently, miners have used their clout to fight persistently for democratic elections; many in Viloco and other centers vowed to oppose this latest interruption to the final consequences. The resistance of such communities had been instrumental in staving off a 1979 attempted coup.

But this time determined resistance from miners, urban workers, and campesinos was no match for brute military force. Three weeks after the coup the military had forced workers back to their jobs, cleared road blockades and restored the flow of produce to the cities. Under direct supervision from the Argentinian military, the Bolivian repressive apparatus became more thorough and astute. In the cities, specially trained para-military forces made surprise raids during the night, systematically terrorizing anyone thought capable of providing leadership to the resistance. Repression in the mines was less selective because opposition there had been more widespread and militant. Since international journalists were expelled from the country in mid-August and national newspapers censored documentation of atrocities committed in these first weeks has rarely reached the international press. Excerpts from a letter by two miners' wives from Caracoles, a mining center near Viloco, to the archbishop of La Paz describe the coup's aftermath: