Workers' Liberty

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.

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.

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.

On Saturday I went to Socialist Resistance's Latin America dayschool, which had sessions focusing in particular on Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba. While there was open discussion where members from other groups could say what they thought - all too rare for many left "schools" - I felt that key questions about the character of these governments were ignored, and it had little focus on independent, working class politics.

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.

From my blog - www.trotskyist.blogspot.com

Below is a - translated - letter sent to me by Angel Choque, one of the most important figures in the Movimiento Sin Tierra, a movement which fights to reclaim Bolivia's land so that it can be controlled by the indigenous campesinos who work it.

Reactionary landlords based in Bolivia's Santa Cruz province have pledged to set up "self-defence groups" - i.e. paramilitary forces - in the wake of Evo Morales' announcement that much of the country's land is to be redistributed to poor peasants. According to the BBC, "Bolivia's big landowners, he said, had to accept that the lands their ancestors stole during the Spanish conquest five centuries ago would now be returned to their original owners". The landowners' association will fight "by any means" to defend its "rights".

When, on the 11th, the Financial Times declared its worry over Evo Morales' alleged desire to expropriate gas without compensating multinationals, I was rather skeptical as to whether Morales' rhetoric at the Vienna summit had any substance to it. Indeed, reading major Bolivian daily La Prensa, we find some rather interesting nuggets of information about what else Morales said when he was in Europe. On Sunday the 14th, just 3 days after pretending that his government's position was not to compensate foreign gas companies, he had some rather different sentiments for the right-wing French President Jacques Chirac -

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”.

According to the Financial Times, Evo Morales has announced that he is not going to compensate foreign companies for the state's "takeover" of their capitalised subsidiaries in Bolivia. He bolshily proclaimed that "We don’t have to talk, dialogue or negotiate when it comes to the policy of a sovereign state" - scary stuff for the multinationals...

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.

Today I´m leaving from Bolivia, where I´ve had an excellent time on the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign delegation, meeting trade union and social movement activists.

What has been impressive is the sheer radicalism of the ordinary people here - the papers might tell you that everyone supports the Morales government, but talking with taxi drivers and trade union leaders alike, it is impossible to escape the fact that Bolivians want real change - changes that this government won´t deliver.

Today we were in Cochabamba, Bolivia´s second largest city and one that was at the centre of the war against water privatisation ("Water War") of 2000. It seems to be rather a hotbed of struggle - today me met not only the organising committee "Coordinadora" of the 2000 dispute, but also the pilots on strike at LAB.

As I have earlier mentioned on this blog, LAB (Bolivian airline) workers have been strike for some weeks over the failure of the state to nationalise the airline - Morales says he made no promises to mount an overall nationalisation of the economy, so refuses to save the industry, which is going to go bankrupt. 2,200 workers have already been mounting pickets of airports and hunger strikes to put pressure on Morales - no flights can come into or leave the country while their blockades are up. This is why the government has turfed workers out of airports using tear gas.

By Pablo Velasco

Pakistan

Six Pakistani left parties and groups have united to form Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (AJT — the People’s Democratic Movement), which has the potential to become the fifth-largest political group in Pakistan. The AJT aims to contest the 2007 elections.

David Broder outlines a critical view of Evo Morales’ rise to power in Bolivia and subsequent programme

When Morales was elected in December 2005 the mainstream media saw it as the victory of the — workers’ and peasants’ “social movements” whose demonstrations and strikes shook the establishment last summer. This was a crude mischaracterisation.

The election of leftish governments in Latin America continues with the recent Presidential victories of Morales in Bolivia and Bachelet in Chile. Other left candidates are likely to win in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela this year.

By Darcy Leigh

On 18 December 2005, Evo Morales of the MAS (Movimento al
Socialismo, Movement Towards Socialism) won 54% of the vote in the
Bolivian presidential elections - the highest support for any
candidate in Bolivia since the restoration of "democracy" in the
1980s.

Bolivia

The Bolivian elections on 18 December are being hailed as the end of 20 years of neoliberalism.

By Dan Katz

IN June 2005 the latest round of street fighting in Bolivia ended, having forced the resignation of the president, Carlos Mesa.

Activists should get hold of a copy of Basta! to show to their union branch or student union. It is a short film by Mariette Heres about the Bolivian gas and water wars. It will be shown at the No Sweat conference on 26 November.

By Harry Palmer

The road to the Bolivian elections on 4 December is becoming increasingly fraught with obstacles.

In June mass protests demanding the nationalisation of the energy sector pushed out the president of Bolivia. José Sagaz of the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign spoke to David Broader, giving a personal view.

By Pablo Velasco

The barricades in the Bolivian uprising have come down for now, but the struggle is far from over.

An article for the Alliance for Green Socialism, by Paul Hampton, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty

The barricades in the Bolivian uprising have come down for now, but the struggle is far from over.

Strikes, road blockades, marches and mass demonstrations have once again swept across Bolivia, sparked off by the government’s controversial hydrocarbons law. The law increases taxes on multinational companies but falls short of the demand agreed in last year’s referendum of 50% royalties on gas and oil extraction. Business-backed president Carlos Mesa has refused to sign the law, obliging the speaker Hormando Vaca Diez, to authorise it.

In January Bolivia was gripped by marches and protests. Here is an abridged account by Jim Shultz from the Democracy Center, based in Cochabamba in Bolivia:

President Mesa has announced that he will support a reform allowing each of Bolivia’s departments (essentially the same as states in the US) to directly elect their governors. Right now those governors are appointed by the President. There is no legislative branch at the state level.

Bolivia is on the cusp of more social struggle, as the government presses ahead with plans to export gas - the spark for an uprising in October 2003.

The main trade union federation, the COB, is threatening an indefinite general strike next month in a renewed bid to halt the government's plan to export natural gas. Last week it gave President Carlos Mesa until 1 May to change his policy on the gas export plan or face more action.

By Pablo Velasco

• Bolivian general strike

• Muchtar Pakpahan to stand in Indonesian elections
• Good news from Greece

Bolivian general strike

Bolivia is on the verge of a third uprising in the space of a year - with trade unions calling for an indefinite general strike this month.