Background
César Lora was born on 31 October 1924 in Bolivia, the son of a miner father and a Quechua woman.
César Lora was born on 31 October 1924 in Bolivia, the son of a miner father and a Quechua woman.
His grammar and high school were completed in the mining camp of Uncía. He refused to finish his law studies at San Andrés University, becoming active in the Revolutionary Workers Party (POR), and the labor movement.
He wrote the Thesis of Pulacayo, the Trotskyist-oriented statement of principles adopted at the Fourth Miners’ Congress in November 1946. Lora was a member of the Bloque Minero Parlamentario, a group of working-class deputies elected to Congress in 1947.
The POR under Lora’s direction worked closely with the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) in the labor movement between 1946 and 1952, when both parties were illegal. For a few months after the April 1952 National
Revolution, the POR dominated the newly established labor confederation, the Central Obrero Bolatino (COB), but in October was ousted by the MNR. Subsequently, the POR was hit by political and theoretical schisms. Many POR labor leaders joined the MNR, and the POR suffered from conflicts within the Fourth International. It finally split in 1956. Lora remained head of the POR faction that centered around the newspaper Masas.
Lora continued to maintain some influence in the Miners Federation. In 1971 he was a leader of the short-lived Popular Assembly during the administration of President Juan José Torres, and he ran as a presidential candidate for his party in the 1985 elections.
In a number of books, and in Masas Lora has been a prolific chronicler of political and labor history of Bolivia.
