Christian Democratic Party (Bolivia)
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Christian Democratic Party
Partido Demócrata Cristiano |
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| President | Jorge Suárez Vargas |
| Founded | February 6, 1954 |
| Headquarters | La Paz |
| Membership (2013) | 59,408 |
| Ideology |
Progressivism Integral humanism Christian democracy |
| Political position | Centre |
| Regional affiliation | ODCA |
| Colours | Red |
| Chamber of Deputies |
10 / 130
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| Senate |
2 / 36
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| Party flag | |
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The Christian Democratic Party (Spanish: Partido Demócrata Cristiano, PDC) is a progressive Christian-democratic political party in Bolivia.
Founded on 6 February 1954, as Social Christian Party (Spanish: Partido Social Cristiano, PSC), and assumed its present name at a party congress in November 1964. Its intellectual foundations were study centres of the Church's social doctrine, the Bolivian Catholic Action and “Integral Humanism” (a centre for the study of the philosophy of Jacques Maritain). It remains a conventionally “tercerista” Party, calling for a “third way” between capitalism and socialism – a way that would be more humane and truly democratic than either competing social-political system. Founded by Remo Di Natale, Benjamín Miguel Harb, Javier Caballero, and Emanuel Andrade.
The Christian Democratic Party took part in the 1958 and 1962 congressional elections, in 1962 Benjamín Miguel Harb became its first deputy. It boycotted the 1964 and 1966 presidential votes. In 1967, the party took part in the Government of the President of René Barrientos Ortuño, being given responsibility for the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and this was a major misjudgment by the PDC leadership. When military forces carried out bloody raids against mining camps, the Christian Democratic Party was forced to withdraw in anger and embarrassment, with severe internal divisions resulting. The party's youth organization had been discontented with the third-road philosophy for some time, and the mine camp invasions helped to crystallize their rebellion; they favored revolutionary socialism as a solution to Bolivia's dilemmas. In the late 1960s, the youth wing seceded to form the Revolutionary PDC which later became the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Several discontented members of the party, including Jose Luis Roca Garcia, also left to join General Alfredo Ovando Candía's short-lived nationalist revolutionary government in 1969–1970.
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