Pedro Montes was born on 14 April 1960 in Catavi, a small mining community nestled in the rural foothills of Llallagua, part of the Bustillo Province of northern Potosi.
12 Facts About Pedro Montes
Pedro Montes was raised in and around these mines; the son of a mineworker, he was groomed to take up the trade at a young age and began replacing his father as a laborer for the Catavi Mining Company by 18.
Pedro Montes began actively participating in Catavi's trade syndicates around 1984, the year he was elected to represent the Beza shaft as its sectional delegate.
Pedro Montes had himself taken part in these conflicts, for which he suffered reprisals from the military regimes of the day.
In 1988, Pedro Montes transferred to the Huanuni mine in Oruro, where he began scaling the ranks of the area's trade syndicates.
In June 2006, during its XIV National Congress, Pedro Montes capped off his union rise with his election as executive secretary of the Bolivian Workers' Center.
Pedro Montes's designation came at a time of weakness for the organization, which in recent years had lost influence to emerging peasant unions and organized social movements aligned with the Movement for Socialism, whose leader, Evo Morales, was elected president the year prior.
When Pedro Montes did enter his organization into the fray, internal and external pressures forced him to go on the offensive.
Pedro Montes served as leader of the party's caucus in the Chamber of Senators for the first two years of his term and was reelected for a third non-consecutive time in 2018.
Ultimately challenges to Copa's presidency failed to manifest, and she was ratified as head of the Senate in early 2020, whereas Pedro Montes was replaced as first vice president by Senator Omar Aguilar.
Pedro Montes was not nominated for reelection in either 2019 or the rerun general elections of 2020.
Pedro Montes belongs to the second generation of COB leaders whose ideological formation derives from the paramount labor activists of the day, namely: Filemon Escobar, Juan Lechin, Victor Lopez, Edgar Ramirez, Simon Reyes, and Oscar Salas.