Workers' Liberty

The Bolivian government has announced its plans to "draw up a living-plan to support poor people and select land to be redistributed." This is not enough to satisfy the landless peasants - they have begun to take their country's resources into their own hands rather than trust Morales' government to give them a few fragments which the landowners weren't using anyway. But in reaction the state today launched a violent backlash against the landless peasants' movement, seizing back "occupied" estates in the name of the ruling class.

With so many big estates in the hands of so few landowners, Bolivia is crying out for a forcible redistribution of land. Given that around a quarter of a million peasants have no land to work - therefore no livelihood - a government which claims the support of the trade unions and social movements ought to fight for their rights.

Of course, we know that Morales' government does not represent this. Morales will not take on capital or mount expropriations - this is not merely thanks to moderate temperament, but because of his whole class-outlook. Although the bourgeoisie is not his social base per se, neither is it the case that his reformism is reconciliable with workers and peasants seizing power from the ruling class and taking over the state. His 'radical' rhetoric and piecemeal reforms dressed up as 'revolution' act as a pressure valve on their militancy, in the service of the Bolivian bourgeoisie - and indeed Brazilian investment in gas, infrastructure and land.

Despite initial corporate outcry and Brazilian diplomatic hostility to Morales' so-called nationalization of gas, Petrobras said last week that it was happy to see that the policy was "not nationalization, but a tax increase". It is currently drawing-up a new contract with the Bolivian government, no doubt made all the more secure by the pretense of real change in ownership rights.

But Morales' attack on the peasants' movement this weekend was a worse outrage - he did not just show cowardice or hesitation in making reform, but downright reaction. After several days of the Movimiento Sin Tierra expropriating farms and carrying out an embryonic 'agrarian revolution' on their own terms, the government intervened on the side of property.

At 4:00 this morning, police attacked "occupied" farms in the region around the city of Oruro, in a bid to evict more than 10,000 campesinos who had seized control of the estates and were protesting for land re-distribution. In a battle pitching the army and police against the MST, the Bolivian papers report that 3 policeman were injured and one shot dead - we are not told of the casualties among the peasants. 9 "civilians" were however injured, many of them by dynamite thrown by the police in attempts to dislodge the MST.

Police reservists from La Paz and Cochabamba were brought in to fight against the peasants - around 30 arrests were made as the government re-claimed the estates. The evicted campesinos regrouped in the city of Oruro itself, and according to Opinión, "arrived in the 10 de Febrero Square, before destroying the windows of the mayor's office buildings and the police headquarters, in the middle of dynamite explosions". The police broke up the peasants using tear gas.

Although attacked by jornadanet.com as "instigators of violence and seizing land", the MST can hardly be seen as "occupiers" in a country where control of land has always shifted solely according to the law of the jungle - first stolen by the invading Spanish Empire, then passing from one dictator's best friend to another through almost 200 years of military coups. Yet the MAS government has been oh-so-quick to make a stand against these "illegal expropriations".

In a thinly-veiled threat, the government has "called for people not to let themseleves be manipulated by looters and land-traffickers. And it asks those who are illegally settled on private and public-owned estates to vacate them voluntarily in order to avoid fresh violence."

As yet the government has not evicted the miners from their co-operative in Oruro "in the name of prudence" and in expectation of "negotiations". Whatever they try to do to repress the Bolivian social movements, it is clear that years of struggle have opened up a can of worms against capitalism in Bolivia - the escalation of the Movimiento Sin Tierra over the last few years, particularly in the last week, shows no signs of abating. The MST will keep up the fight - Morales' slogans are way behind them, and every act of repression can only make his attempt to keep them on-side more hopeless.