The Túpac Katari Revolutionary Movement was founded in May 1978 and was constituted as a left-wing national democratic organization for all classes, based mainly on the peasantry and other exploited strata, with the object of establishing a just society, majority rule and self-determination of the people.
In 1978 the Túpac Katari Revolutionary Movement took part in an electoral coalition Democratic and Popular Union backing Hernán Siles Zuazo.
[3]: 83 For the 1979 general elections, the fraction that retained the name MRTK, led by Macabeo Chila Prieto, was the component of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement-Alliance, with the MNR's Víctor Paz Estenssoro as the coalition's presidential candidate.
[2]: 151 Within a year of its formation, divisions emerged within the MRTKL between Jenaro Flores Santos, on the one hand, and Víctor Hugo Cárdenas and Walter Reynaga Vásquez, the party's two deputies of the National Congress, on the other.
Jenaro Flores Santos's exit still did not achieve unity in the MRTKL: neither Víctor Hugo Cárdenas nor Walter Reynaga Vásquez would accept the second position in the new party hierarchy.