BOLIVIA: Interim

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In the vanguard, on trucks and makeshift ambulances, came the wounded who fell in overthrowing the Bolivian tyranny (TIME, July 29). Then followed rifle-toting men & women, exultant students, ordinary citizens. Fifty thousand strong, they paraded last week through La Paz's treeless Plaza Murillo to celebrate the first month of the revolution.

So spontaneous had been last month's uprising, that not until hours after President Gualberto Villarroel's body swung from its lamppost had revolutionists gathered to form a representative junta. To the junta and to outsiders from Buenos Aires to Washington, the victory parade was one bit of evidence among many that both revolution and junta had popular support. But no one, either in Bolivia or abroad, seemed to know in what direction the new Government would go.

Tin Threat. Many Bolivian regimes (Villarroel's was an exception) have been in the pay of the tin barons. Until Bolivia's economy is broadened or until cheaper Malayan production knocks high-cost Bolivian tin for a loop, tin rule will be a threat.

Two members of the junta have a record of past employment with tin barons Simón Patiño and Mauricio Hochschild. There are leftists in the junta too, but no known Communists. Offstage, among the tough Indian miners, there are powerful leftist forces. Now they may go over to scholarly José Antonio Arze who is marshaling his P.I.R. (Leftist Revolutionary Party) for position. But he is torn between desire for power and fear that, once in command, his Socialist program might fail. Marxist Arze, who says he is no Communist, well knows that Bolivian Socialists can never nationalize and operate the tin mines so long as all the smelters are abroad.

Tossed into the Bolivian broth last fortnight was white-haired, sexagenarian Judge Tomás Monje Gutierrez, a political moderate who took over as President of the junta. From a window of the presidential palace that overlooked the Villarroel lamppost, he delivered his inaugural speech. Said he, "Whenever you people get tired of me, let me know so that I can go away." Apparently he meant what he said. Last week the junta decreed national elections next January for a permanent President and congress.