ABSTRACT
The return of the Rosca was brutal—President Villarroel lynched on a lamp post in the Plaza Murillo, his face stomped to a bloody pulp; Villarroel’s secretary hanging from another lamp post, brains oozing from a smashed skull; the president’s aide d’camp dangling nearby, intestines spilling from a bayonet gash in his belly. Survival necessitated evolution of the organization, but problems in conveying information and planning actions within the broader cellular network frustrated MNR strategy and tactics during the Concordancia’s six-year reign (“Sexenio”). Repression in the mines, where Trotskyists were organizing a revolutionary vanguard among the workers, was draconian. A confrontation between mine workers and tin magnates followed the postwar resumption of foreign competition and reduction in demand for tin. Profits were to be wrung out of the mine workers by revoking the trade union reforms of the RADEPA–MNR regime.
