Juan Lechín

Lechín was born to a Lebanese immigrant father and a Bolivian mother in Corocoro, a city in the Department of La Paz. He worked in the Catavi and Siglo XX tin mines, both of which were owned by the mining tycoon Simón Iturri Patiño. While working as a machinist in the mines, he was made aware of the desperate conditions of the vast majority of the highland workers.

In the 1940s he became involved in the nascent labor movement and joined the Revolutionary Workers' Party (POR), a Trotskyist political party.

In 1944, Lechín led a congress of miners in Huanuni, Oruro, that led to the formation of the FSTMB. Lechín was elected the union's Executive Secretary. At this point, he became affiliated with the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR), though he maintained good relations with the Trotskyist POR.

Following the 1952 Bolivian National Revolution, Lechín was chosen as Minister of Mines and Petroleum. He also led the founding congress of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), an umbrella federation of labor unions, and was elected its Executive Secretary. Since he had played a vital role in the Revolution, and had advocated the permanent extension of weapons to the workers' militias to guarantee regime stability against the possibility of an oligarchic/military backlash, he became extremely popular with the poorer sectors of society. Indeed, he was the most charismatic and popular MNR leader other than Víctor Paz Estenssoro. In addition, he was of far more radical political persuasion (Marxist-inspired) than the rest of the government leadership. This inevitably led to growing intra-party tensions and disagreements over labor issues and personal ambitions.

In frank disagreement with what he saw as the increasingly conservative policies of president Hernán Siles Zuazo, by the late 1950s Lechín had begun to form a left-wing opposition within the ruling party. To reduce these tensions and prevent fragmentation, Paz was persuaded to return from retirement and lead the MNR in the 1960 presidential elections. The conciliatory Paz chose Lechín as his vice-presidential candidate, apparently with a promise that Lechín would be the presidential candidate in 1964.

Instead, Lechín's intransigence on political issues eventually convinced Paz not only to reneg on his promise but also to expel vice-president Lechín from the MNR at its 1964 convention. At that point, Lechín formed the Revolutionary Party of the National Left (PRIN).

A controversial but undeniably important historical figure, Lechín was reviled by many and followed almost blindly by others. A major criticism used against him is that he tended to de-stabilize precisely those regimes that were friendliest to the interests of the working class (Paz Estenssoro, Torres, Siles Zuazo between 1982 and 1985), while being quite deferential to the most hardline right-wing governments (Barrientos, Banzer, Garcia Mesa), at least until he could get safely out of the country.