Ralph Schornman on Bolivia

Excerpts from an interview. These are taken from the text of Ralph Schoenman's interview with The Militant in New York on November 3rd. . . Having explained the circum- ‘stances of his first arrest along with Tariq Ali and other. members of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Commission, Schoenman continued : "We were picked up again the next day and this harassment carried on for some time, a day or two, until finally, owing to the credentiel of Ovando, the army officers accepted our presence, although reluctantly. I have to say that their instincts were correct. . . We than got to Lagunillas which is the operational command of the Fourth Division from which they were launching their antiguerrilla actions in Nancahuazu. We had numerous talks with the army officers involved and were present when some of the équipment captured from deposits was brought in, including documents. ". . . I was in touch with Regis. I was able to see him on a number of occasions alone, which was not easy to contrive. . . We had very long, thorough exchanges and I have a number of letters and documents of Regis' which he wanted to get out of the country. Then we began to bribe some army officers and acyuired important information relative to the fate of Regis and the fate of certain material witnesses. What became clear was that the Bolivian army doesn't take prisoners unless those prisoners cooperate . . . those who do not are dispatched. . . I can say definitely that Regis, apart from having been tortured systematically, his nails broken, beaten into a coma -- he nesded five blood transfusions -- Regis was also taken into a helicopter and the effort was made to throw him out, but he was able to resist that. ", . « The guerrilla seemed to be comparatively cut off from the traditional left formations. One consequence of this was that in the cities and in the mines there was an absence of struggle which related to what the guerrilla was doing. In the cities very little is known of the Liberation Army. I think that the guerillas made a number of mistakes. Partly they were mistaken in the elements that were permitted to incorporate themselves into the guerilla: lumpen proletariat in some _part, people untested and who proved totally incapable of sustaining the trials of a protracted guerilla struggle. Certainly incapable of standing up to the treatment the Bolivian army metes out to anybody in its control. + « « « The mines are the places where the most experienced and the most politically advanced elements of the workers and peasants are to be found. And I think that the guerrilla mst take this in to account in his strategy of struggle. . I think the role of the guerrilla in Bolivia is to harrass the army, to disperse it and to get it off the miners' backs. There isn't any doubt that the setbacks that have been suffered are very severe. And they demand reassessuent largely in the realm aff tactics. . No reassessment can go outside the necessity for armed struggle. When Che Guevara worked his perspective out, he had an expectation of at least a decade of struggle in Bolivia. The struggle in Bolivia in this phase is no more than eleven or twelve months old. I'm sure it's going to unfold in the next decade in a form not very differant to that expected by Che in the large. In tactical terms there may be differences but I think Che's estimate is the correct oneY