Pedro Montes Gonzales (born 14 April 1960) is a Bolivian mineworker, politician, and trade unionist who served as senator for Oruro from 2015 to 2020. A member of the Movement for Socialism, he previously served as executive secretary of the Bolivian Workers' Center from 2006 to 2012. Born in Catavi, Montes spent most of his life as a mineworker at complexes in Oruro and Potosí. Having got his start in the sector's organized labor movement in the mid-1980s, he progressively climbed the ranks of the country's largest workers' syndicates, holding membership within the Syndical Federation of Bolivian Mineworkers and serving as executive secretary of the Oruro Departmental Workers' Center. In 2006, he was elected chairman of the Bolivian Workers' Center, the country's national trade union center. As head of one of the most powerful syndicates in the country, Montes collaborated closely with the socialist administration of President Evo Morales, whose government took a more cooperative approach towards organized labor. Although this alliance bore fruit in the form of concessions towards workers, Montes also drew criticism for being too appeasing towards the government, and he is cited as having significantly contributed to his organization's gradual co-option into Morales's party, the Movement for Socialism. In 2014, he was elected as a senator for the party. Early life and career 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 Potosí. The mineral-rich region is home to significant deposits of tin ore, for which it became the site of one of the largest mining complexes in the country. 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. He got his career start working some of the lowest-ranking jobs within the mine's internal hierarchy, beginning as a minecart operator before later become a chasquiri—messenger and tool collector. Trade union career 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. His entrance into the sector began at a time of effervescence for the mining proletariat, hot off the successful fight for the recovery of Bolivian democracy, in which the labor movement