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Mass Mobilizations Convulse Bolivia
by Gerry Foley / June 2005 issue of Socialist Action
Resurgence of the mass movement against allowing transnational
companies to exploit the country’s natural resources has brought Bolivia to
the boiling
point.
The Bolivian radical news website Econoticias reported May 19 that
the unionized tin miners had taken the leadership of the mass movement in
the streets of La Paz:
“There were no more than 500 of them, but they are already leading
the struggle of tens of thousands of workers, peasants, and people from the
poorest and most rebellious neighborhoods in Bolivia, who have begun to
rise up to finally overthrow the neoliberal regime.
“They are the waged miners [most miners have been converted to supposedly
self-employed workers by privatization] who emerged from the pits of the
Huanuni mine and today in La Paz are leading mass demonstrations of
teachers, merchants, students, factory workers and peasants, men and women,
elderly people and children.”
Econoticias reported May 24 that La Paz was crowded with
demonstrators. It did not make an estimate of the numbers, but it said that
50,000 street sellers were supporting the protests. In its May 25 issue,
the Mexican daily La Jornada put the numbers of protesters at 40,000. In
any case, it is clear that the crowds are huge and clashes are occurring
with the police who are trying to block off the government buildings.
The leader of one of the principal parliamentary parties, Evo
Morales of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), has accused the president of
the national
congress, Hormando Vaca Diez—the next in line to take the presidency
if the current chief executive, Carlos Mesa, is forced out—of being
involved in a conspiracy to stage a military coup. In its May 23 issue, La Jornada
reported, “The Permanent Assembly of Human Rights in Bolivia has called on
the citizens to start up a process of defending democracy.”
Morales also accused radical leaders of planning a coup d’etat,
since they are calling for shutting down the parliament.
The incumbent, Carlos Mesa, was vice president under Sanchez de
Lozada and took over after his predecessor was forced from office in 2003.
When Mesa threatened to resign a few months ago, Morales urged him to stay.
Morales was obviously hoping that the present government would remain
in place until the upcoming regular parliamentary elections, which he hoped
to
win.
Actually, Morales’ party’s vote declined in the recent municipal
elections, with independent left candidacies showing the greatest dynamism.
Now he is calling for the convening of a constituent assembly.
Morales previously supported Mesa’s proposals for regulating the
sale of Bolivian natural gas and oil to foreign trusts, although soon after
the proposal was accepted in a referendum, he began to interpret it in a
different way. Under the pressure of the ongoing radicalization, he has
increased his demands, just as Mesa has increased his offer.
Mesa’s new hydrocarbon law, promulgated May 17, sets the royalties
due the Bolivian government at 18 percent and the tax rate at 32 percent.
Morales now is calling for setting the tax rate at 50 percent. The transnational
oil companies are already denouncing the May 27 law as “confiscatory.”
However, the vanguard of the mass mobilizations, the Bolivian Trade
Union Confederation (COB) and the mass organizations in the city of El
Alto—the working-class satellite city of La Paz, with a population of
nearly a million—are calling for full nationalization of the country’s
natural resources without compensation and the ouster of the foreign
companies.
On May 17, the expanded plenum of the Central Obrera Regional of El
Alto, which Econoticias described as a “bulwark” of the struggle in 2003,
issued a
declaration calling not only for the nationalization of oil and gas
but for overthrowing the government and establishing a workers and peasants
government.
The statement said: ”Considering, that in October 2003 the heroic
people of El Alto spilled their blood for the nationalization of the
hydrocarbons and the
building a gas industry, while power was left in the hands of
another bourgeois politician, Carlos Mesa.
“That hunger, poverty, and unemployment have deepened in our city
and in the whole country and the bourgeois has reorganized itself more
strongly under the
leadership of the oil companies and imperialism. “That Mesa and the parliament have
promulgated a hydrocardon law in favor of the transnationals, which reinforces
our people’s poverty.
“That the promises of royalties and jobs are a farce and a deception
and solve nothing.
“That now or never the people must take power—workers, peasants, the
impoverished middle class—and form their own government, a government of
the people, in order to nationalize the hydrocarbons and all our natural
resources, expelling the transnationals.
“Therefore, the Second Expanded Emergency Plenum of the Central
Obrera Regional de El Alto resolves:
“1) To call for a united, combative, intransigent struggle for the seizure
of power by the people, expelling the oil transnationals and their traitor
government of Carlos Mesa Gisbert and their whole parliament of
stooges, by forming people’s assemblies that will organize the seizure of
power.
“2) To declare a strike of citizens, of neighborhoods, of unions, of
toilers and blockades of roads and highways throughout the day and night in
the city of
El Alto, for the nationalization of the hydrocarbons, the closure of
the parliament, and the resignation of Mesa. We call for beginning a day of
sporadic blockades on May 20 and the unlimited strike on May 23, with an
encirclement of the city of La Paz and rallies at the blockades.
“3) To organize the seizure and encirclement of the International
Airport, the pipelines, banks, government offices, etc. until we achieve
our objectives.
“4) To organize in a covert way picket groups armed with arrows,
sticks, and other weapons of self-defense in the various areas to defend
the workers.
“5) To mobilize jointly representatives of the vital organizations
in the city of El Alto, together with the miner and teacher and other
compañeros … to begin
a march to the center of La Paz on May 18 demanding nationalization
of the hydrocarbons.
“6) Ongoing meetings with all the vital organizations, federations,
and unions to synchronize the mobilizations.
“Adopted in the meeting hall of the Central Obrera Regional of El
Alto on May 17. Long live the nationalization of the hydrocarbons! Long
live the heroic fighting people of El Alto! Down with the parliament and
its government! Long live the government of the workers and peasants! El
Alto always on its feet, never on its knees!”
In the face of this popular onslaught, at least for the moment, the
weak government of Carlos Mesa seems paralyzed. Two provincial governors
have already resigned.
The major response of the right at the moment is to try to split off
the provinces in the Amazonian area, where most of the hydrocarbon
resources are located.
This area is historically more conservative and whiter than the
highlands, where mining is concentrated and the indigenous populations
predominate. In part, the demand for immediate convocation of a constituent
assembly is designed to respond to the separatist threat.
It is obvious that Bolivia is in a profound crisis, in which
large-scale violent confrontations are possible. The country is very
vulnerable to foreign pressures
and intervention. But the mass movement in Bolivia has long been an
inspiration to the socialist and workers’ movement in the much larger
countries of the region, and that is especially true after the upsurge of
2003.
It is too early to see what the impact will be in such decisive countries
as Argentina and Brazil. (The events in Bolivia have just begun to be
reported in
the big Spanish-language press.) But that should become evident
soon.
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