Bolivia

Brings you to tears, makes your blood boil

Writer and director Sarah Polley’s new film, Women Talking , based on Miriam Toews’ book, is a devastating exploration of abuse and sexual violence, trauma and women’s oppression — and resistance. In an isolated religious community, a group of men have been drugging and raping the women and girls for years. Women have long been excluded from education, silenced, and kept disempowered, some domestically abused. Women Talking ’s opening declaration, “What follows is an act of female imagination”, alludes to the response of the village elders to the attacks. The attacks were dismissed as either...

Bolivia: battle for democracy

Luis Arce, the Movement for Socialism (MAS) candidate, won the Bolivian election on 18 October by a landslide. This is good news for the left in Latin America: a show of resistance against a coup of militarists and fundamentalist Christians, and largely a result of mass demonstrations and direct action by the organised left, Andean peasants and indigenous communities. However, Arce’s election does not mean a change from the ways that trapped the left in the situation before the coup, nor is he a direct continuation of Morales’ government. The November 2019 coup in Bolivia happened after...

Right wing on the rampage in Bolivia

After two weeks of protests Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, in power for the last 14 years, has been forced by the armed forces to resign his post. The unrest was a result of accusations of electoral fraud in Morales’s latest election (October 2019), as well as the Supreme Court (November 2017) overruling the referendum result which denied Morales the right to run for his fourth re-election. There has been some controversy on whether the last presidential election was in fact rigged. Following the accusation, Morales himself asked the Organisation of American States (OAS) to...

Uprising in Cochabamba

By David Broder The movement against the far-right in Bolivia stepped up last month with a mass uprising in the nationÕs third city, Cochabamba, which dislodged the right-wing governor Manfred Reyes Villa and put forward the demand for genuinely democratic representatives. This was twinned with a solidarity strike organised by residents’ association FEJUVE in the city of El Alto, also seeking to get rid of a governor who wants to see the country split up. At the heart of the struggles is the so-called self-determination movement of the Santa Cruz province, in eastern Bolivia. Although, as in...

Bolivian miners fight privatisation

Sixteen miners have been killed in fights over the control of Huanuni, the biggest tin mine in Bolivia. The fight was over whether the mine would remain in state hands, or be given to a “co-operative” - essentially privatisation, as such co-ops have a strictly tiered managerial system, no effective workers’ involvement and very low wages for workers employed by the privately controlled board. Trade unions are prohibited. The Bolivian state company COMIBOL took over control of the mine after the bankruptcy of British owners RBG Resources, leaving management in the hands of the workers. The...

Morales: no challenge to capitalism

BY ALAN PORTER Evo Morales' MAS party has won 51% of seats in elections for a new Constituent Assembly, leaving him well short of the two thirds majority needed to pass legislation. This is problematic for his government, since the whole point of a Constituent Assembly is to rewrite the constitution. Now the support of right-wing parties will be needed for any reform to be made. Some Western media has rather unfairly labelled this as a “defeat” for Morales’ “radical reforms” - after all, he did as well as in December's presidential election, and leading right-wing opposition PODEMOS lost 5% -...

Morales nationalises gas?

By David Broder Bourgeois opinion was shocked on 1 May when new Bolivian president announced that he was going to nationalise the country’s gas resources. Troops were sent to occupy refineries and installations where the hydrocarbons are extracted as Evo Morales decreed, “The time has come, the awaited day, a historic day in which Bolivia retakes absolute control of our natural resources”. This move surprised the multinationals — Petrobras, the Brazilian energy giant, and the Spanish government, both complained that Morales had earlier promised “negotiations” before he took any moves to...

Needed: a workers’ party

David Broder went to Bolivia during April as part of the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign delegation of British trade unionists. In Solidarity 3/90 I argued that while Evo Morales has failed to deliver what the masses demanded during the gas nationalisation protests of last summer, the trade unions and social movements have failed to come out strongly enough in criticism of the new Bolivian president. Having seen more of the objective situation on the ground, I realise that such an analysis is only partly correct. While many trade union leaders are keen for revolution, they remain generals without...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.