David Broder’s talk to The Commune’s recent Manchester forum

The class struggle in Latin America is one that has always roused great interest and a certain romanticism among the western left. The continent has seen a number of heroic struggles against often savage exploitation and state repression, whether by the industrial working class, landless peasants or indigenous peoples. But the politics of the Latin American left are complex and often mischaracterised.

I’m going to talk about the recent history of Latin America and the relationship of US imperialism to national ruling classes; in what ways this has shaped the major left trends and the workers’ movement on the continent; and the different types of movement that exist today. 

Understanding

I’d like to preface my remarks by talking about visiting Latin America and the method of understanding its political dynamics. Given that we can read and learn a lot about the continent’s class struggle but not do very much to affect its course, analysis takes precedence over abstract prescription as to ‘what is to be done’ by forces we can do little to influence.

I myself was lucky enough to take part in a Bolivia Solidarity Campaign delegation to Bolivia in spring 2006, and at the same time spent a few weeks in Argentina.  We met with trade union and community campaigners and discussed the general strikes which had taken place in 2003 and the previous year, but more importantly visited workplaces and chatted with street-sellers, minibus drivers, and other so-called ‘ordinary people’ about what was going on. Similarly, in Argentina I went to several workplaces which had been taken over – by which I mean, stolen by employees and put back to work – during the 2002 economic collapse.

This had an important effect on my political thinking and understanding of what communism is and what the workers’ movement is. This despite the fact that the time I was a very much a Trotskyist and what I then wrote about what I had seen reflected certain preconceptions of such politics, for instance the need for a vanguard party to lead these struggles and give them political direction, or abstractly insisting that it is impossible to have ‘islands of socialism’ in workplaces, when in fact it is precisely this kind of struggle for control that has the potential to radicalise and give confidence and political direction to wider layers of the working class.

Activists often invoke their experience of visiting some far away country like Venezuela or Cuba as evidence of their right to tell you what to think about it and dismiss criticism. But if their analysis, their understanding of what is going on, doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, the reason is that they have gone to their imagined socialist paradise with their eyes, ears and mind firmly closed and only found out what they wanted to. For sure you can meet workers who are enthusiastic for any leader or party you like; much as if you are a Maoist you can find a Hugo Chávez quote to the effect that he is a Maoist; if you are a Trotskyist you can find a Hugo Chávez quote telling you he’s a Trotskyist; if you are a Castroite just the same, and if you like Nicolas Sarkozy, Chávez called him a socialist too.

My point is not just to be open-minded and try and get a global picture of what’s going on, but moreover to not take the word of any party calling themselves socialist or just because their country of origin is perceived as part of the ‘Third World’. Often on the left people say that it’s patronising to criticise ‘Venezuela’ or ‘Cuba’  since these are poor societies trying to build socialism. But is it not in fact more patronising to assume that the people who live under such governments cannot hope for any better than a rather undemocratic welfare state, since it is their fate to live in the Third World with the law of the jungle, or at least, not a societal order such as we ourselves would like to live in.

Undoubtedly these governments do take measures which benefit the working class such as the building of better public services, high-quality education and healthcare which is the envy of the region. But those who say that Venezuela and Cuba prove that socialism works are not just arguing that those systems are less exploitative than those of Haiti or Colombia, but rather that they are a model of the social relations we want to create. Surely the other side of learning from people on the other side of the world is that there must be a critical engagement where we try and find exactly what we have to learn, rather than simply cheer-lead.

Imperialism

However, one thing we have to understand when we look at the continent and its political dynamics is the role of imperialism, in particular the United States. For more than a hundred years the US has been the dominant power in the region, and has had an extremely damaging effect. I’ll  talk quite generally about the continent as a whole and then look more to specifics.

Traditionally speaking, the relation of western capital to Latin America has been to establish ‘enclaves’ of absolute control, extracting primary resources – whether this means mining, oil extraction, or agriculture – on the basis of a sharply unequal balance of trade. Some of the poorest countries on earth are in effect subsidising the United States economy.

Moreover, the economic structures are often backward, with a very small capitalist class – what are often referred to as ‘oligarchs’ – controlling large agricultural estates, latifundias and selling resources abroad. These are outward facing – focussed on the export market – and highly dependent on the economic patronage of US capital.

Indeed, this method of siphoning off natural resources in no way implies that US capital, and institutions under its influence such as the International Monetary Fund, has any particular interest in developing local ‘capitalisms’ in Latin America. The development of infrastructure has been slow to the point of non-existence: indeed, while fifty years ago Bolivia was covered in rail networks, for the last thirty years there have been no trains whatsoever; even in Argentina, the richest country on the continent by far, there are hardly any. Neither can we find many welfare states to ‘buy off’ the working class through the provision of basic ‘cradle-to-grade’ security and support.

Hard power

Of course, US capital cannot safely operate if there is political chaos, but any political stability such as might exist is underpinned by the economic relationship I describe. It is difficult to manufacture popular consent for IMF reforms and a submissive trading set-up in which most people have no stake.

If we look at the case of natural gas – Bolivia is the second-largest producer in Latin America and it is its main resource – all the extraction rights were sold off by President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 1996, unconstitutionally, without the consent of Congress, basically as a backroom deal by a gangsterish individual. An individual, indeed, who was privately educated in the United States, speaks Spanish with an American accent and who like every single Bolivian head of state from 1809 to 2005, came from the 15% of the population who are whites. Today those who supported ‘Goni’ are trying – by force – to split Bolivia down the middle, creating a sort of Latin American version of Kuwait in the east of the country.

Their resort to military means is a drop in the ocean of such practice on the continent in the last century. Not a single country in Latin America has anything close to a stable record of ‘ordinary’ parliamentary democracy.

Chile had 60 years of such practice, and 1970 saw the election of the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, composed of the Socialist Party, Communist Party and various small liberal and nationalist forces. He called himself a socialist, nationalising much of the economy and promising development, coupled with a mild anti-imperialist rhetoric. There was at the same time a rather more revolutionary workers’ movement, widespread factory occupations and insurrection in the countryside, yet at the same time petrol strikes, workers being locked out of work and the deliberate under-stocking of stores in an attempt by the right to resist reform. Indeed, Allende had tried to posture as moderate and reconcile his development of Chile’s state apparatus and economy with the interests of the oligarchy, sending troops into the poor barrios to disarm the masses and try and suffocate the popular movement, at the same time as bringing generals into his cabinet. One of his ministers, a certain General Pinochet, did not wait long before taking this opportunity to massacre the unarmed workers, set up a government of his own and murder Salvador Allende.

Everywhere the military has had repeated and direct interventions into government, including the juntas of the ’60s-’80s. Such regimes totally crushed dissent, denying even the capitalist class any democratic rights, in the knowledge that establishment parties cannot be trusted to keep a lid on the masses. The world’s great democratic statesmen were strangely silent on these coups and massacres – in the infamous words of 1945-53 US President Harry Truman, ‘He’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard’. Their victims can be counted in the millions.

Today, after a certain level of pacification following the collapse of the USSR when it supposedly became impossible to change the world for the better, this version of ‘hard power’ is again on the offensive. Starting with the 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, we have seen the army used against the 2003 and 2005 general strikes in Bolivia; last autumn’s massacres and attempted seizure of power in the east of that country, the offensives of the Colombian army and state-sponsored paramilitaries against trade unionists and peasant communities, and in June, a military coup to remove President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras.

Populism

Related to this is populism. The submission of local economies and of political rights to the interests of US capital is precisely why there is such a strong social basis in Latin America for what we might call ‘populism’: the politics of ‘the nation’ and the vast majority of the population, including not only the working class and peasantry but also the local aspirational bourgeoisie, as against multinational exploitation.

Developing the national economy and its infrastructure in the circumstances I have described relies on heavy state intervention to try and create a national capitalist system with a broader ruling class, build  a larger state apparatus including some limited degree of welfare and public services, and an effort to try and establish less unequal relations with the United States. The state apparatus, its technocrats and managers, either co-ordinate capitalist development, or directly accumulate capital for the state machine.

This attempt to break out of submission of national capital may well be utterly at odds with the interests of the existing ‘dependent’ oligarchy, another reason why feuds among ruling classes can often not be settled by the acceptance of parliamentary rules-of-the-game and parties alternating control of government. Measures undertaken in the interest of capital in general do not necessarily suit any particular individual capitalist.

There are two current figures I would like to mention in this regard: Hugo Chávez and Manuel Zelaya. Neither began their political career on what could even vaguely be called ‘the left’ – Chávez was an army man who neither at the time of the coup he attempted in 1992 nor at the time of the 1998 Presidential election called himself a socialist or anything of the sort. Indeed, in 1998 his party’s big idea, alongside nationalist myths about Simon Bolivar, who liberated the country from the Spanish empire, was the ‘Third Way’ of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. But one thing he was trying to do was stand up to the traditional power-sharing parties’ monopoly of control.

Manuel Zelaya’s father was responsible for tens of thousands of killings of agricultural workers attempting to organise, and he himself is a member of the Partido Liberal, the historic main party of the Honduran ruling class.

Yet both leaders found their hands tied by the existing power relations – Chávez faced fierce resistance to his attempts to nationalise oil and place his own supporters in the state apparatus, to the point that in 2002 there was an army coup against him in which he was arrested and abducted, with a new government installed led by business representatives. Only since the mass resistance which defeated that coup did he begin calling himself a socialist and try and ride on the workers’ movement.

Zelaya was an overt neo-liberal, but IMF loans conditions and the 2008 food price crisis, coupled with the soaring – then collapse – of energy costs brought the country close to bankruptcy such that he had to turn towards Chávez’s ALBA economic union, much to the offence of the likes of Shell and Exxon-Mobil. The workers’ movement and Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular to which he was formerly hostile suddenly became necessary allies, and he tried to find a mass base by introducing a basic welfare package and a small increase in the minimum wage.

From a rather different political background, Evo Morales explicitly talks in terms of capitalist development, and his vice-president Álvaro Garcia Linera has written and spoken extensively on the idea of ‘Andean capitalism’, a mixture of state monopolies and petty-proprietor small businesses to replace the US-dependent oligarchy.

In different times, of course, Fidel Castro found after his national liberation movement that the USA was trying to displace him, and two years after taking power – and after the CIA invasion of Playa Girón and the Bay of Pigs – he gravitated towards the USSR, an alternative source of patronage and export market. Only then did his nationalisations of US property take on a ‘Marxist’ character. The Peruvian army, 1968-75, expropriated British sugar mills and American oil plants, without compensation, but their anti-imperialist and ‘communal’ revolution was at the same time explicitly anti-communist.

State capitalism

Perhaps these leaders are forced to talk ‘left’ and make anti-imperialist postures to find mass support, and doubtless they often do find it. The criticism that Chávez’s elections are in some way unfair is dubious, but misses the point in any case. If there were free and fair parliamentary elections in Cuba tomorrow the Castro brothers may well win a majority, but that does not imply that it is a desirable or workable model of socialism. Any political system can only last so long if it does not have popular consent, but popular consent to the existing order of things continuing above their heads is not the same as the mass of people taking charge of their own communities and workplaces.

Firstly because the statification of the economy does not imply working-class control. Bolivian tin miners have repeatedly gone on strike at nationalised mines over such measures by Morales as pension cuts, and been fired on by soldiers. Attempts by Venezuelan workers to take over and control workplaces run up against the buffers of the Bolivarian bureaucracy, a new managerial elite which has substituted for the old.

In Helen Yaffe’s new book about Che Guevara’s economics, she cites an example of managers being cleared out of a factory, and busy efforts to find replacements. The state tells some college students that they are the new managers, and Yaffe describes them celebrating in the dorms. The anecdote is presented as twee and chaotic, as if an example of the people trying to run things ad-hoc. In fact it represents that the regime reflects capitalist hierarchies, having to find someone – even if inexperienced -to tell workers what to do, rather than let the workers themselves take charge. Hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers are on piece-rates, competing with one another to produce more and be paid more.

Chávez talks about replacing private companies with co-operatives, but these are just state-backed capitalist exploitation. The Caracas dustmen found this to their cost when, to meet their socialist government’s rules on tendering contracts, their employer declared the company a co-operative. Having put 49% of the company shares on sale, at market rates, to the staff, the boss proceeded to lay-off a third of the workforce and cut others’ wages. When the workers went on strike in protest, the mayor, of Chávez’s party, informed them that he could not take their side since as the company was a co-op, they were employers, not employees! We can also find Chávez’s speeches to business leaders promising to keep a lid on the workers’ movement a worrying echo of the political trajectory of his ally in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, who having led a similar regime during the 1980s civil war – the Sandinistas, who resisted the CIA-backed Contras –  is now openly pro-business.

Moreover, as in the aforementioned case of Allende, the failure of such populist governments to dismantle the state apparatus such as the bureaucracy and army – it is not at all on their horizons to do so – makes any of the reforms they grant the workers transitory and subject to repeal. Morales’ land reforms have been very hesitating, and his Constituent Assembly election excluded parties to his left and yet granted huge concessions to the far right by allowing them an effective veto over constitutional changes.

Movements from below

For this reason, to ask ’should we support Morales against the right-wing?’ is precisely the wrong question, since when the right were trying to overthrow Morales, workers and indigenous people had to defend themselves against armed fascist thugs in the streets, while the government called for “national dialogue” and made generalised appeals for “calm”, diplomatically ignoring the small matter who was attacking whom. It was exactly the path trodden by Salvador Allende, and one condemned by large parts of the Bolivian workers’ movement, for instance the Central Obrera – the union federation – in Oruro, which published a statement ‘Neither Evo nor the oligarchy’.

It is precisely this type of self-organisation indpendent of the state which is the most exciting aspect of the political dynamics of Latin America today. In Bolivia in the last decade there have been three general strikes, with indigenous communities but also working class suburbs mobilising en masse. In El Alto, a poor city close to La Paz, the FEJUVE association brought together workers, street-sellers and the unemployed – working-class women were particularly prominent – in a participatory council which organised against the army and police, not only demanding that the multinationals be expropriated and a Constituent Assembly be convened, but enjoying de facto self-governance as the Sánchez de Lozada regime was toppled.

When the Argentinian state went bankrupt eight years ago and millions were thrown out of work in the crisis, hundreds of workplaces were taken over by the ‘redundant’ employees and run under their own collective control – several still exist to this day. I mentioned earlier having visited such workplaces, and I think the best known, the Zanon tile factory, is a useful example of the kind of movement I am talking about. Upon arriving in Neuquen, where the plant is based, I phoned to ask if I could come over that morning. I was told that the workers had decided to give themselves the morning off because they wanted to support a demo for striking teachers! Without a vanguard party or any grand schemas the workers know of the need to spread their struggle, and how to go about it: for example the paper Nuestra Lucha the workers produce to help spread the idea of self-management; giving free tiles to schools and hospitals and other self-managed workplaces; their strong links with – and support from – their local community; to name but a few examples. So too in Buenos Aires have workers on the underground train system taken inspiring strike actions in which they sought to connect with the working public by keeping the trains going and the network active – but refusing to take any fares.

Furthermore, in the cases of military coups I have described there has often been heroic mass resistance, defending democratic rights as such against the military. In Honduras this struggle has now gone on for eleven weeks, such that Manuel Zelaya this week could make a daring comeback to the capital. So to in 2002 it was the mobilisation of working class people which defeated the right-wing coup against Hugo Chávez’s government. Although any government of the capitalist state, left or right, is a government of the ruling class, if these struggles to re-establish deposed leaders succeed, they do not simply restore the previous status quo. People’s experience of solidarity and collective struggle is such as to give them confidence in their ability to stand up for themselves and to change things. Since the 2002 fight against the Venezuelan coup, the level of working-class organisation, number of strikes and the battle for control in the workplace – including against the Chávez government and its bureaucracy – is at a far higher level. This has opened up more political space for a movement which could more fundamentally challenge capitalism than Chávez ever would.

Here we have taken in a broad sweep of countries and periods of history: for sure Bolivia today is not exactly the same as Chile in 1973, and nor is it the same as Argentina in 2002. But what I have attempted to demonstrate is that the different trends in the workers’ movement, and then of the left-wing face of state capitalism, exist above and beyond particular incidents or national peculiarities. I have not cited them for the sake of historical interest. How these tendencies have arisen – and their idea of how communism should come about, whether through a benign state or via the mass of people building a movement by which they might take charge by and for themselves – is intertwined with all debate, anywhere on Earth, as to our vision of the society we want. For that very reason, the movements from below on the continent are also our struggles, and a political culture from which we have much to learn.

The Commune’s first Manchester forum, Saturday 26th September

The last decade has seen a wave of class struggle shaking neo-liberalism in Latin America, with trade unions, social movements and indigenous people across the continent stirred to action.

Many also think that leaders like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia are ‘building socialism’, and the radical right and US imperialism have mobilised to try and crush them. July saw the most outrageous action yet as the Honduran military overthrew the centre-left president Manuel Zelaya.

Where is the class struggle in Latin America headed? What does the Obama administration mean for US relations with the continent? Are systems like Venezuela and Cuba a model for communists to follow? Come and join the debate at The Commune’s forum.

The speakers are:

Cat Rylance
Guest speaker: Cat is a member of Communist Students and was involved in last year’s student occupation of Manchester University during Israel’s winter bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Read her article on Bolivia, “No Trust in Morales”?

David Broder
The Commune; has visited, and written on, factory occupations in Argentina. See his analysis of populism and imperialism in Peru.

5:30-6:30pm, Saturday 26th September, Conference Room 1, Man Met SU, 99 Oxford Road, Manchester
(700 metres walk up Oxford Road from the Anarchist Bookfair venue)

email marco_polo10@hotmail.com or phone 07976 386737 for more details. Click here for leaflet, or on the picture above for poster.

The Commune’s first Manchester forum, Saturday 26th September

The last decade has seen a wave of class struggle shaking neo-liberalism in Latin America, with trade unions, social movements and indigenous people across the continent stirred to action.

Many also think that leaders like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia are ‘building socialism’, and the radical right and US imperialism have mobilised to try and crush them. July saw the most outrageous action yet as the Honduran military overthrew the centre-left president Manuel Zelaya.

Where is the class struggle in Latin America headed? What does the Obama administration mean for US relations with the continent? Are systems like Venezuela and Cuba a model for communists to follow? Come and join the debate at The Commune’s forum.

The speakers are:

Cat Rylance
Guest speaker: Cat is a member of Communist Students and was involved in last year’s student occupation of Manchester University during Israel’s winter bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Read her article on Bolivia, “No Trust in Morales”?

David Broder
The Commune; has visited, and written on, factory occupations in Argentina. See his analysis of populism and imperialism in Peru.

5:30-6:30pm, Saturday 26th September, Conference Room 1, Man Met SU, 99 Oxford Road, Manchester
(700 metres walk up Oxford Road from the Anarchist Bookfair venue)

email marco_polo10@hotmail.com or phone 07976 386737 for more details. Click here for leaflet, or on the picture above for poster.

We have printed more copies of our series of pamphlets, several of which (in particular the long-unavailable Venezuela pamphlet) were out of print. See below for a list of the seven pamphlets available. They cost £1 +50p postage per copy. To order online, work out the total of your purchases then ‘donate’ the money here, making sure to specify in the text box what you are ordering.

Alternatively, write to uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to place your order. We take payment by cheque (addressed to ‘The Commune’, at The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St. John Street, London EC1V 4PY) or by transfer to Co-op account S/C 089299, A/C 65317440.

pamphlet no. 7, march 2009 – the revolution delayed: a decade of hugo chávez

pamphlet no. 6, february 2009 – the meaning of communism today

pamphlet no. 5, december 2008 – the movement for workers’ councils in germany

pamphlet no. 4, november 2008 – the economic crisis: an interview with andrew kliman

pamphlet no. 3, october 2008 – strategy for industrial struggle

pamphlet no. 2, october 2008 – nationalisation or workers’ management?

pamphlet no. 1, september 2008 – bolivia: class struggle and social crisis

More copies of our pamphlet series, many of which had sold out, are now available. The text of each of  the seven pamphlets is online (see the list of subjects below), but you can also order paper copies – £1 +50p postage per copy.

Write to uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to place your order. We take payment by cheque (addressed to ‘The Commune’, at The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St. John Street, London EC1V 4PY) or by transfer to Co-op account S/C 089299, A/C 65317440.pamphlet no. 7, march 2009 – the revolution delayed: a decade of hugo chávez

pamphlet no. 6, february 2009 – the meaning of communism today

pamphlet no. 5, december 2008 – the movement for workers’ councils in germany

pamphlet no. 4, november 2008 – the economic crisis: an interview with andrew kliman

pamphlet no. 3, october 2008 – strategy for industrial struggle

pamphlet no. 2, october 2008 – nationalisation or workers’ management?

pamphlet no. 1, september 2008 – bolivia: class struggle and social crisis

Bolivia’s trade unions are increasingly being incorporated into the state, but some sections of the labour movement are arguing for the re-affirmation of the historic goals of the working class and reclaiming the political indepedence of the unions faced with Evo Morales’ MAS government and the right.

by Enrique Ormachea

Since its foundation, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB – Bolivia’s main trade union federation) has incorporated into its political principles the central points of the Pulacayo Thesis, including the political independence of trade union organizations. Today, the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) government of Evo Morales is trying to take absolute control of the union leaderships, with the objective of converting them into feeble bodies which cover for his ever more blatantly anti-working class and anti-peasant policies.

Much of the trade union leadership has been developing policies openly contrary to the principles of political independence upheld by Bolivian trade unionism, acting against even the resolutions of the last COB Congress.

After more than three years of Evo Morales in government we can say that the October 2003 and May 2005 [general strikes’] programmes have been cast aside by MAS, with the complicity of union leaders who have allowed a sort of “nationalization” of their organizations and who in the name of “the change agenda” have put the brakes on – and put on ice permanently – the needs and demands of the rank-and-file workers.

There are dissident voices

Union leaders in sectors like the La Paz teachers, the Huanuni miners, the Airports Services union and printing workers, among others, have been critical of the COB leadership. The executive secretary of the La Paz city teachers, José Luís Álvarez says that the current government, via perks and pay-offs, has done nothing but corrupt the unions and further still: “it has ended up controlling all the apparatus of the union federation”. But the most alarming result is that it has managed to convert the union leaders into a sort of dam holding back all the grassroots organisations’ demands for struggle.

In early May printing workers in El Alto decided to pull out of the El Alto COR [regional unit of the COB], arguing that its leaders “have changed this union into an agency of MAS, fumbling over the question of trade union independence”(1).

Another dissident voice is Jaime Ferreira, one of the Casa Obrera y Juvenil representatives in El Alto, attacking the “undermining of the programmatic, ideological and constitutional underpinnings of the COB. These mechanisms based on ‘special favours’ implemented by the state have sunk roots, and we are heading towards a type trade unionism which forgets about fighting for members”(2).

From the Pulacayo Thesis to the foundation of the COB

The Pulacayo Thesis(3) argued that the proletariat, even in a backward capitalist country like Bolivia, “is the revolutionary class in society par excellence”. That same class, in a revolutionary alliance with peasants, artisans and other parts of the petit-bourgeoisie, has the aim of carrying out the socialist revolution. Within this framework, it is necessary to fight head-on “against class collaborationism”, since collaborating with other classes means an abandonment of the objectives of the working class.

The thesis considered that workers cannot – and must not – solidarise with any government other than that of the workers themselves, since the capitalist state represents the interests of the bourgeoisie. For this reason, it says that when “unions are converted into appendices of the government, they lose their freedom of action and drag the masses down the path of defeat” it also says that trade union organizations must be politically independent “with respect to all sections of the ruling class, left reformism and the government”.

In this respect, Álvarez argues that the COB, since its foundation(4), has worked under the banner of the political principles of the Pulacayo Thesis, decisive in giving meaning to the creation and perspectives of the COB, “most centrally in the sense that it established itself as a working-class organisation with the perspective and possibility of working to transform capitalist society into a socialist one.”

The COB is a class organization

The COB’s Founding Congress(5) decided that one of its general principles was “To maintain the political independence – nationally and internationally – of the new organization of Bolivian workers, building links in solidarity with the workers of the world, in particular those of Latin America.”

Indeed, the Organising Statutes of the COB currently in effect count among their principles that “In the struggle for the national and social liberation of Bolivia and the demands of the workers it organizes and represents, [the COB] will not tolerate any interests contrary to those of the working class, nor will it renounce any method of struggle or legal means which help its members.”

It also reiterates among its principles “class proportional representation as to guarantee the hegemony of the proletariat in the structures and leadership bodies of the Central Obrera Boliviana”, arguing for the “independence of the COB as a class organization with regard to the government, political parties or other forms of sectional pressure amongst its ranks…”

Reclaim the October programme

For its part, the Political Declaration of the 14^th Ordinary Congress of the COB(6),  taking place when MAS was already in government, (i) expressed the need to “… struggle for the programmes of the October 2003 and May-June 2005 [general strikes]”, understood to mean “the nationalization without compensation of the gas reserves, the recuperation of all natural resources and the abrogation of all neo-liberal laws and decrees”; (ii) considered it necessary to strengthen federation structures such as the Centrales Obreras of each department of Bolivia and the COB, “the basic organizations of the class”.

The same document established that “preserving our class political independence we will defend ourselves against the divisionism the government is trying – and will try – to use to win ground for certain groups’ interests, favouring – deliberately or not – the economic interests of the multi-nationals and imperialist capitalism”.

On 17^th September 2008 the executive secretary of COB, Petro Montes, signed a deal with President Evo Morales in the name of the union, backing and calling for the defense of “the revolutionary change agenda” and rebutting the [right-wing] opposition governors(7). However, in Álvarez’s eyes, this alliance has only served to allow the MAS government “to defend in law the existence of private property, the large agricultural estates and the continuation of this capitalist society which organizes the economy so the bosses and multinationals can make huge profits by exploiting and stealing our natural resources”.

No more concessions

For the former executive secretary of the Central Obrera Departamental in Oruro, Miguel Zubieta, the task of the COB leadership is to re-orient and take up the objectives outlined in the October [2003 general strike’s] programme, (i) establishing collective workers’ control and (ii) taking back the natural resources for the Bolivian people, amongst other promises Morales is not fulfilling.

Álvarez believes that to reclaim the organization for the workers it is of vital importance to “expel representatives of the government and the right from the COB (…), since it should be a union organization allowing us to fight for better living conditions and jobs”.

This also means that workers have the task of reclaiming the class struggle principles of Bolivian trade unionism and making sure their organizations are politically independent from both the bosses’ organizations and parties and the – somewhat reformist – MAS government, which constantly makes concessions to the right at the expense of workers, peasants and indigenous people.

NOTES
1. La Prensa, 23^rd April 2009.
2. La Razón, 9^th April 2009.
3. Passed by the first Special Congress of the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (miners’ union; FSTMB), which took place in 1946.
4. 17th April 1952.
5. This congress took place on the 16^th-17^th April 1952.
6.This congress took place from 19^th-29^th June 2006 in Viacha (La Paz).
7. La Razón, 22^nd April 2009.

an Econoticias Bolivia editorial

La Paz, 30th April 2009 – the combative Bolivian working class has begun its May Day celebrations in the midst of a hard-fought struggle among the leadership of the Central Obrera Boliviana [the main union federation - COB], which has begun to fight actively as part of the ranks of the pro-indigenous government of president Evo Morales, whilst the radical miners’ and teachers’ unions are fighting to defend an independent class-struggle position and initiate a struggle over workers’ demands.

Some believe that the unions should forget, at least for the moment, the poverty and exploitation workers suffer, putting their economic and social demands on hold in order to back the indigenous government which is working to humanise capitalism and make it fairer, and which is also confronted by the oligarchy and the fascists. Others argue in reply that workers must win back their independence, putting the brakes on mounting exploitation and taking back the agenda of October [2003's general strike], smashing the power of the oligarchy by taking over the mines, factories and agricultural estates.

The former accuse the latter of being the “left wing of the oligarchy” and an instrument of imperialism trying to bring down the “people’s government” of Evo Morales. The latter, for their part, accuse the former of having betrayed working-class struggle and having been assimilated into bourgeois democracy, abandoning the revolutionary camp and allowing workers to lose some of their wages and become impoverished at the same time as there is a bonanza in the state’s coffers and the bosses’ profits are soaring.

Conflict in the streets

As the most visible side of this conflict, several sections of the Central Obrera de Oruro, miners’ unions, some manufacturing unions and the La Paz urban education workers’ union have begun to demand the resignation of the main COB leader, Pedro Montes, who they accuse of having betrayed the principles of revolutionary unionism for the benefit of an indigenous government pushing so-called “Andean capitalism” and which has become an ally of the big multinationals who still keenly exploit natural resources and cheap local man-power.

“Pedro Montes has become a sort of subaltern of Evo Morales, only defending the President and not the interests of the workers” declared the Trotskyist urban teachers’ union leader Vilma Plata, who explained the resolutions of a meeting of workers in the sector which urged the COB to remove its leader, who according to the statutes already finished his mandate in June 2008.

The teachers’ conference furthermore demanded from the Morales government a salary increase linked to family living costs, permanent jobs, a pensions system financed by the bosses and the state, as well as the resignation of Montes.

This demand, however, did not make much impression on the COB leadership, which is actively campaigning to secure the re-election of President Morales in December 2009’s vote. Among the majority of the unions in the cities and in the countryside, leadership functions have fallen into the hands of trade unionists who have cosied up to the government – some through political conviction, others through financial temptations and positions in the state apparatus. Many of them are currently running their own campaigns to be included in the pro-government candidate lists for the December elections, and for this reason are using this May Day to demonstrate the “political weight” they have and their ability to mobilise the union rank-and-file for President Morales, just like the aforementioned COB leader.

Pressure and co-optation

Montes, a miners’ leader who took over the union leadership in June 2006, at first declared himself “independent” and promised to defend the “class independence” of the workers, rebuffing the first government attempts to convert the COB into an appendage of the ruling party.

However, since early 2008, Montes has integrated the unions of the Central Obrera into the Coordinadora Nacional por el Cambio [Conalcam; National Co-ordination for Change], the political-trade union wing of Evo Morales’ governing Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS).

During this process the COB leadership has abandoned all of the workers’ offensive struggles and threatened grassroots unions that if they did not openly support President Morales they would be declared to be “the right wing opposition”, put in front of a tribunal and then expelled.

This stance generated firm resistance and repulsion among the union leaders who had not been co-opted by MAS. “Who is he [Pedro Montes] to call us members of the opposition? We must be clear, we are not of the opposition, all we want is to keep our ideological independence with respect to the government, and all the more so as regards the right”, said Víctor López, leader of the Central Obrera de Oruro – controlled by the miners – recalling that Bolivian workers had always fought against the right and against neo-liberalism, capitalism and imperialism.

The principal workers’ leader in Oruro, Jaime Solares, furthermore warned that “Pedro Montes should be put before a tribunal for betraying the working class and portraying the workers’ organisation [the COB] as if it were a political party within the Movimiento al Socialismo”.

“He [Montes] knows full well that we have a congress soon and that in past years it has been said that no-one should compromise the organisation of the working class.  For this reason he should be judged by a disciplinary tribunal”, said Solares.

Political independence

Among others who do not trust the current COB leadership nor Morales, are the combative mining workers’ unions, the political and ideological vanguard of the Bolivian working class.

According to Guido Mitma, executive secretary of the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (Fstmb), President Morales “abandoned the agenda of October” 2003, when the people mounted an insurrection and brought down the neoliberal governments of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Carlos Mesa. “We do not share the policies of MAS – rather, we must insist that the government carries out the programme of October and the structural reforms demanded by the Bolivian people.

The aforementioned October agenda included the nationalisation without compensation of the rich gas and oil reserves and the mines, the expulsion of multinationals, expropriation of the huge agricultural estates, the jailing of the genocidal neo-liberal governors and improvements in the living and working conditions of the impoverished Bolivian people.

The miner Mitma did not rule out the possibility that the next Ordinary Congress of the COB will decide to form a workers’ party representing the historic economic and social interests of the working class, in concord with the October agenda and in open struggle against the oligarchy and the fascists. “We have always had this in mind, following the thesis of Pulacayo – workers and peasants to power, forming a political wing [...] to defend the interests of the Bolivian people, not like what Evo Morales is doing”.

Fascist terror

In this struggle for control of the unions, President Morales, MAS and the COB leadership have in recent days been trying to capitalise on the recent unfurling of a plot by an international group of fascist terrorists who were organising to secure by force the independence of Santa Cruz, the region in the east of the country which has been de facto abandoned for the last two years to the control of the oligarchy and the 100 powerful family clans who own the land and big business.

Linked to the multinationals and under the tutelage of the US Embassy, this settler oligarchy and the 100 clans, who had been forced into a corner and feared losing their privileges during the masses’ onslaught of 2003-2005, have begun to regain strength thanks to the hesitating and conciliatory policies of Morales. Today, they control the east and part of the southern valleys, almost half the country (Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija and part of Chuquisaca and Pando).

The government stance of respect for private property, the multi-million dollar oil contracts, the huge agricultural estates and the new Constitution’s guarantee of all the privileges and franchises of the oligarchy have breathed new life into the racist oligarchy and the 100 clans, the source of strength for fascism and far-right terrorism.

For their part, the radical unions who question Morales and the COB leadership believe that the only way to finish off the fascists is to smash the power of the oligarchy, denying them control of the land, the mines and natural resources.

On the other side, the trade unionists loyal to Morales make use of the fascist terror to silence all criticism of the government, in order to unite all social movements and working-class forces in defence of the President and to strengthen their grip on the COB.

Behind the perks and pay-offs

“All governments try to control the Central Obrera, but this time the difference is that the leaders are doing it in a more barefaced way, using the workers’ and popular movements to secure high offices and then acting against their interests. This is the case with the Minister of Labour, Calixto Chipana, who used to make very radical interventions in conferences and who we now see as a Minister; he has forgotten all the demands of the section of workers he represented”, said José Luis Alvarez, one of the teachers’ leaders.

Earlier this year the manufacturing workers led by Chipana protested in front of the Ministry of Labour demanding the resignation of the then Minister Wálter Delgadillo, throwing tomatoes and eggs at the building. On 9th February their leader Chipana joined Evo Morales’ cabinet.

Something similar happened with the Central Obrera de El Alto under the control of Edgar Patana, who went from being an “independent” to “signed up with MAS”. Early in the year this leader decided to extend his own union mandate, which according to the statutes was already over, saying that he would remain in charge until December to secure Morales’ electoral success.

The situation with agricultural workers is no better than in the COB. “The punishment for those who do not agree with the government is expulsion. We had one representative, Felipe Machaca [who held the post of general secretary of the COB, the second most important after Pedro Montes' executive role], but they expelled him. The same happened with Rufo Calle, who was forcibly displaced”, said the mallku [Aymara leader] Felipe Quispe, who was alongside the miner Solares one of the principal actors in the downfall of the genocidal ex-president Sánchez de Lozada in 2003.

In September 2008 we carried extensive coverage of the coup attempt by white right-wing oligarchs in the east of Bolivia, who wanted to split the country, overthrow Evo Morales’ soft-left MAS government and crush the mighty workers’ movement. There were numerous racist attacks on indigenous people, with dozens massacred by fascist militias. As Morales vacillated and called on the mass movement triggered by the coup attempts to keep ‘calm’, it was up to the urban poor, indigenous peasants and workers to defend themselves. Eventually the failure of the coup resulted in Morales sitting down to talks with the oligarchy, and after making concessions over his planned State Political Constitution, the document will go to a country-wide referendum on Sunday 25th. The article below examining the issues is a translation of a piece by Socialismo o Barbarie.

Before the constitutional referendum of Sunday 25th January 2009, we say…

Neither the ‘no’ of the reactionary racist oligarchy in the east…

Nor the ‘yes’ of MAS, which wants to introduce “Andean capitalism…

We call for abstention!

Declaration by Socialismo o Barbarie Bolivia
La Paz, 22nd January 2009

On Sunday 25th January the Constitutional Referendum to ratify the new State Political Constitution (SPC) and allow Evo Morales to stand for election again will take place.

Whatever the excited celebrations of government-linked publicists like Pablo Stefanoni (for having implemented the Morales-Linera “negotiated exit” strategy) the mood of the country is one of significant polarisation over the constitution’s text. As usual, the obstinate reactionary racist right has led a very stubborn campaign against the new SPC text, using arguments such as the idea that the constitution will punish “all those who follow the Catholic faith”… arguments that have had their impact on some parts of the population even outside the east.

In reality the very staging of the referendum is the side-effect of the defeat of the right-wing in their seditious and putschist assault last September, which led to the murder of dozens of peasants near El Progreso in Pando province. The smashing of the seditious uprising has temporarily put them on the defensive and so they have had to sit down with the government to negotiate the constitutional text, passed in parliament with the support of PODEMOS, the strongest bosses’ party in the country.

It was a deal made on the back of the massive march on La Paz by the peasant masses last October. These masses pushed for the ratification of the new Constitution, while knowing nothing about the latest concessions made…

However, after a few months when, we repeat, the right-wing temportarily found themselves on the back foot, they have returned to the fold with a very aggressive ‘no’ campaign.

Whatever the triumphalism of pro-government publicists like Stefanoni, this recovery is the sole and absolute responsibility of Morales and Linera, since at the time of the peasant siege in Santa Cruz last September, they saved the oligarchy from the just anger of Bolivia’s exploited and oppressed at the massacre they had just perpetrated.

Why not vote ‘yes’ to the constitution?

But the fact that we clearly distance ourselves from the reactionary oligarchy and the ‘no’ campaign does not mean that Socialismo o Barbarie Bolivia will be calling for a ‘yes’ vote for the new constitutional text. Even given the limitations of the text produced by the Constituent Assembly, the negotiations with PODEMOS in October represented a fresh turning of the screw towards a Constitution which in all aspects questions nothing essential in the capitalist and semi-colonial Bolivia existing today.

We are not going to go through it point by point, which would be impossible given the length of the constitutional text (more than 400 articles). Except to mention that in several aspects the constitutional text is “self-contradictory”, meaning it says one thing on one hand, then the opposite on the other…

So we will look at some key aspects in general terms:

a) The constitutional bill expressly guarantees the security of capitalist private property in the country

b) It also guarantees the continued involvement of private companies and multinationals in hydrocarbon production… not to mention minerals, given the continuation of private ownership of gold and tin mines, the surrender of the Mutún iron resources, etc., etc.

c) Not even in terms of the land problem does it create the conditions for meaningful land reform: it may be that it limits estates to 5,000 or 10,000 hectares… but this only applies to the future. The “property rights acquired” before now cannot be touched. In effect this means that the constitutional text gives legitimacy to all the existing latifundistas [wealthy land-owners] in the country.

d) Scandalously, it does not get rid of the wretched neo-liberal Law 21.060 which has been in effect in this country for over two decades and ensures continuing privatisation in the country.

So the text does not even introduce reforms worthy of the name. There is little or nothing that goes beyond recognising the cultural-political rights of the indigenous population (which in itself is no bad thing). But, even in this case, it does it while maintaining the exploitative and unjust structures which keep the country dependent. For this reason, it will be difficult to make such rights worthwhile under the conditions of continuing capitalism in Bolivia.

We call for abstention, or blank or spoiled ballots

In such conditions as we describe, SOB Bolivia calls for abstention, or blank or spoiled ballots. Besides, the reality is that several representative sections of the mass movement have already expressed this intention, seeing the profound limitations of the constitutional project.

At the same time, we think that those elements calling for a ‘no’ vote from the left like the LIT-CI [a continent-wide Trotskyist group] and activists of the PO (Partido Obrero [Argentinian Trotskyists]) living in Bolivia, are committing a most serious and shameful mistake.

Just like in the Venezuelan case, rather than repudiating the bourgeois nationalist or popular front government from the standpoint of class independence, militants of the LIT-CI in Bolivia end up, shamefully, mixing their flags with those of the reactionary opposition. In Bolivia, worst of all, with a racist opposition.

We must insist: this is shameful! The reality is that the real content of the ‘no’ campaign obviously helps – and it could not be otherwise – the right-wingers. There is nothing that can be done by small left groups to change this: it is an objective fact on which we have to base our outlook.

In these circumstances, mixing one’s banner among the “escuálidos” is, we repeat, a scandal which both leads to confusion and stains the banner of revolutionary Marxism, handing pro-MAS and pro-government forces the argument that “Trotskyism goes hand in hand with the racists”… an argument you can hear being made in various media.

So in these circumstances, Socialismo o Barbarie Bolivia repeats its call for ABSTENTION and the continuation of the struggle for a perspective independent of the reformist MAS government, based in the class struggle and other exploited and oppressed layers, on the way to a National Workers’, Peasants’ and Indigenous People’s Assembly facing up to the fresh, dramatic confrontations which are inevitably on their way.

Bolivia’s President makes a deal with the parliamentary right-wing and seals the ratification of a bill calling a referendum on the new Constitution. The far-right, the fascist governors and the ‘hardest’ oligarchs, who control half the country, are preparing resistance and civil disobedience.

La Paz, October 21st 2008 – translated from Econoticias Bolivia

Early this Tuesday evening president Evo Morales could boast of achieving half of his objectives after the Bolivian Congress voted for the staging of a referendum in three months’ time to ratify his new State Political Constitution, re-formulated at the eleventh hour with right wing MPs, who agreed to make legal the re-election of the president, in exchange for eliminating from the constitution’s text all reforms they considered radical.

Having promulgated the bill, after two days when indigenous people and peasants encircled the Congress, Morales now faces the enormous challenge of enforcing the law on January 25th 2009 in the east and in the valleys, which are controlled by fascist forces and the ‘hardest’ oligarchs, who have already warned that they will not respect either the Parliament’s or Morales’s decisions.

MORE CONCESSIONS

The new constitution – after more than 150 of the 400 articles designed by the Constituent Assembly have been altered – leaves the enormous agricultural estates untouched, defends major private property and foreign investment, and keeps in place almost all the privileges of the landowners and oligarchs who exploit natural resources without limit.

The constitutional text puts forward the deepening and development of Andean capitalism and respect for formal democracy, opening the way for provincial autonomy to be recognised for the sake of national unity.

The new constitutional text recognises the rights of indigenous peoples, and would allow Morales to be re-elected one further time, but not indefinitely, as the forces of the right had feared.

In spite of this, the most radical elements in the oligarchy and the fascist bands who continue to control half the nation’s territory (Santa Cruz, Beni, Tarija and Chuquisaca) expect rejection of the referendum and have announced that in these regions the new bill will not be respected.

PROVINCIAL AUTONOMY

The new constitutional text establishes that “the provinces that opted for regional autonomy in the July 2nd 2006 referendum will have to adapt their Statutes of Autonomy to this Constitution within a maximum period of six months.

With this measure, he pretends that the illegal and unconstitutional Statutes ratified in the separatist provinces can be adapted to the new bill. This, however, will not satisfy the secessionists. According to the right-wing ‘civic’ leader Juan Carlos Urenda, who drew up the Santa Cruz Statute, the new article in the Constitution would mean the tacit abandonment of his Statutes, which he would not tolerate.

THE SIZE OF THE AGRICULTURAL ESTATES

Another key issue is the size of agricultural holdings. Even if in the referendum we will still vote on whether to limit the maximum agricultural holding to 5,000 or 10,000 hectares, another article is included which qualifies this: the 5,000 or 10,000 hectare limit will only apply to property registered after the putting-in-place of the new Constitution, if a ‘Yes’ vote wins in the 25th January 2009 plebiscite.

According to the Rural Development Minister Carlos Romero, this means that the properties currently being reorganised will be regulated by the current laws, meaning that, as long as the estates are productive, there will be no limit to their size and they will not be taken back or expropriated. This is to the great relief of the 100 clans who own the land and big business in the east of the country and in the valleys. They control more than 25 million hectares, five times more than two million peasants who barely subsist in the valleys and in the Altiplano working on smallholdings ruined by over-farming and desertification.

THE WEAPONS OF THE RIGHT

Upon the passing of the bill by Congress, and its later promulgation by president Morales, the massive indigenous, peasant and trade union “long march” on La Paz converted itself into a real popular festival. This also happened, although on a smaller scale, in other cities of the Altiplano and in rural areas.

In the cities in the east and in parts of the valleys, the situation was different. In the city of Santa Cruz, the bastion of the oligarchy and the fascists, an assembly held by the influential Civic Committee warned of resistance and civil disobedience.

The forces of the oligarchy and the fascists are debating at least three courses of action to block Morales’s new referendum.

One of these is a legal challenge before the Constitutional Tribunal over the way in which the new referendum call was ratified, considering it illegal given the pressure social movements put on the Congress.

Another would be the action already taking place in the regional Electoral Courts, controlled by the oligarchy and by fascists, questioning the reliability of the electoral register. These Courts have already announced that they will not stage an election before an audit and cleaning-up of the electoral register, which in reality would mean stopping a vote any time soon.

The third option being considered by the right-wing governors and oligarchic forces is active resistance to the referendum, using shock troops and the fascist bands who hold absolute control of four of Bolivia’s ten biggest cities, where even President Morales is unable to venture.

After Congress passed the bill calling for a referendum on the new Constitution, the right-wing governors and the forces of the oligarchy are already working to stop it taking place. In La Paz, however, President Morales and the peasant and indigenous organisations continue celebrating their victory, trusting in the idea that laws and votes will suffice to defeat fascist barbarism.

The Commune has published many reports from Bolivia, mostly translations of articles by the trade union news website Econoticias. We have also established contact with Socialismo o Barbarie, a group who have comrades in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Paraguay as well as Bolivia, and so are pleased to publish this translation of a recent SoB report on the social crisis there.

Bolivia on the brink of partition
By José Luis Rojo and Martín Camacho
From Socialismo o Barbarie in La Paz, 17th September

“The fascists shall not pass: the people will crush them”.
La Paz – Once again, events are moving rapidly in Bolivia. After two years of relative “calm” in the class struggle (2006-2007) in recent months the social and political convulsions traversing the country have again become red-hot.

The sign of the onset of the most dramatic events since October 2003 and May-June 2005 (albeit, this time with the opposite meaning) was the unquestionable electoral success of president Evo Morales and vice-president Álvaro García Linera in the 10th August recall referendum.

Backfiring

So things aren’t happening as the right-wingers and parliamentary opposition had hoped. Having put the MAS government on the defensive and having won five elections on the trot (the autonomy referendums in Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija and the election of a new governor for Chuquisaca), above all thanks to the parliamentary base of the oppositionist Podemos party, they imagined that they were more or less on the brink of revoking Morales’ mandate and being able to call a fresh general election.

But it backfired. Moreover, the reactionary opposition ended up with divisions amongst themselves, with the “politicos” sat in the National Congress (mostly from Podemos, the party of the former president Tuto Quiroga, who was sympathetic to Banzer) and the ‘civic’ leaders opposed to the governors, who were not so convinced of the recall referendum “manoeuvre”.

Apart from this, it was very much an open secret that the government was going to win the referendum (it was a huge miscalculation of Podemos to finally call a referendum after the successful Santa Cruz autonomy vote of 4th May), but none of the opposition groups expected such a mandate for Morales.

With 67% of the national vote, including significant support in the provinces of the Media Luna, and the recall of the opposition governors in the La Paz and Cochabamba provinces, the government unquestionably had a political triumph, showing that very wide layers of the peasant and indigenous masses and urban poor continue to consider it as their government: “‘fondness for Evo’ consists of a mix of ethnic identity and social politics”, commented the MAS-supporting analyst Pablo Stefanoni.

At the same time, although the mandates of the governors of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija were also ratified (there was no referendum in Chuquisaca because the oppositionist governor had only recently been elected), they were clearly exposed as a minority in the national scheme of things.

After several days of doubts, the government ended up calling a new referendum, this time to ratify its bill for a new Constitution. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, pushing the right-wingers to direct action in the knowledge that on the national electoral plane they are for the time being a clear minority.

A generalised offensive for secession

Almost immediately after the announcement of the Constitutional referendum, the CONALDE (the chiefs of staff of the reactionary oligarchy in the east), at the head of the oligarchy’s most determined elements, the oppositionist governors, called for a regional “plan for struggle”.

Their explicit demand: the devolution of a given percentage of the IDH (hydro-carbons taxes). However, the real undercurrent was nothing other than refusal to allow a constitutional referendum which – without misquoting them – they believed they could not win.

“The key issue is the MAS’s Constitutional bill. We cannot consider this document or any product of an illegal [process]“, said Carlos Klinsky, president of the Asamblea Preautonómica de Santa Cruz.

The aforementioned “plan for struggle” in fact means a genuine and generalised secessionist and putschist offensive characterised (for twenty days in a row now) by blockades of national highways, occupations of public buildings belonging to the national state, racist attacks on the indigenous people and peasants and indeed the explicit rejection of the nation’s president’s right even to enter the territory of the five provinces involved in the secessionist process. In truth, this very serious situation was already in place beforehand.

But the high point of the escalation was the fascist massacre which took place in El Porvenir, Pando province, on 11th September, where 16 peasants and primary school children are now reported dead, 50 or more “disappeared” and dozens and dozens were wounded.

This was a real human hunting trip. A hunt organised (no doubt about it) by the provincial and municipal authorities themselves, headed up by one of the four principal right-wing leaders, the Pando governor Leopoldo Fernández (who is now in prison).

“Governor Leopoldo Fernández was the intellectual author of the peasant massacre. Those directly responsible were former peasant leaders, employees of the provincial authorities, right-wing activists from Cobija [capital of Pando], ranchers and members of the right-wing alliance Podemos. “We went along as always, accompanied by our wives and children, but unfortunately we met with an ambush in El Porvenir”, recalled Rodrigo Medina, a peasant leader. The provincial authorities used all their vehicles in the operation, including tractors; in each truck were more than thirty people armed with guns, rifles, sub-machine guns and revolvers”.

This monstrous massacre (including finishing off in cold blood many of the wounded) was the high point of the right-wing bourgeoisie’s secessionist uprising. What stopped it was the wave of profound hatred, shock and repudiation which swept across the people the length and breadth of the country, and among all layers of the oppressed and exploited, the just rage of the people which left Bolivia on the brink of civil war.

This was because it was precisely the situation where the mass movement threatened to cast aside the MAS government with a process of rising calls for mobilisation, pronuncamientos, initiatives to march on Santa Cruz, signs of the masses arming themselves and demands for the lynching of the imprisoned Pando governor, that the “institutions” of the region began desperate moves to stop the escalation in progress.

For this reason the “progressive” governments of the region, led by Lula (in his growing role as the new regional fireman) pressured for round-table discussions with the government on the political condition that this would call for and immediately arrange a “national dialogue”. The dialogue was called in order to calm the choppy waters which forewarned what could have come had the crisis continued a few days longer: the explosion of a real revolution in response to the traitors’ provocation!

The real truth is that this remained very close: on the brink of civil war; a process now mediated by the umpteenth attempt at dialogue.

But this is in circumstances where everything gives the impression that things have gone too far. Therefore, the most likely outcome is that in spite of all the “show” of the round-table of national dialogue, for sure we will see more phases of confrontation during this new “truce”.

In the footsteps of Salvador Allende?

After the El Porvenir massacre and faced with a wave of indignation nationwide – ever more active – that started to be expressed, the right-wingers were on the defensive and losing breathing space. The nationwide hatred and shock could have unleashed a nationwide mass mobilisation which would have stopped the traitors, weapons in hand.

But rather than doing this the Morales-Linera government has limited itself to seeking the backing of governments in the region, declaring an initally very timid state of siege in Pando, and arresting (by force of circumstance) Leopoldo Fernández. All this was topped off with the call for “national dialogue” with those same people who had just before been embarking, with their wealth and their weapons, on a secessionist movement.

Shamefully, what Evo Morales did not do at any moment throughout the twenty days of crisis, was to call for what should have been the most decisive tool for breaking the back of the putschists: the mobilisation of the masses. A mass movement ready to come out [into the streets] (in fact, this did start to happen) before the first call for them to do so. But look at the MAS leaders in La Paz telling the social movements “don’t mobilise”…!

But now: Morales and Linera have again chosen – in these extreme circumstances – to call for the umpteenth “national dialogue” with some governors who all (not only the Pando governor) have hands drenched in blood and racism!

As the last of last straws, this call was made with a signed official document where again predominated the umpteenth appeals and concessions to the right-wing, with the aim of “a great National Accord” with these fascists.
This is taking place under the “mediation” of “trustworthy” and “impartial” institutions like the Catholic Church, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the European Union, its sessions beginning in Cochabamba last Thursday, 18th September.

So the actual text of the agreed document (material which is public knowledge) already includes promises by the national government like “recognising the provinces’ rights to the IDH [hydro-carbons tax revenue]; “respect for the current distribution of royalties to the gas-producing provinces”; “fully re-establishing a state of peaceful co-existence”; and the cherry on the cake: “suspending (the national congress’s) consideration of the call for a constitutional referendum until the dialogue concludes”.

A true disgrace: there is nothing else we can call this document. It ends up making incredible concessions to those who have on their shoulders the responsibility for the deaths and disappearances of almost a hundred peasants, when it should have been breaking their backbone.

Even more serious: this is a suicidal kind of policy which, continuing like this, will only serve to demoralise the mass movement: because if the fascists do not learn their lesson, sooner rather than later they will raise their heads again.

This is not the “sectarian” judgment of people “outside of the process of change” as so many renegade ex-leftists are accustomed to claiming in their search for some niche “in the sun”.

It is the self-same world and regional experience that we have been through so many times before in similar circumstances. Without having to go any further away, it brings to mind the case of Salvador Allende, whose downfall was exactly 35 years before Monday 11th when in Santiago de Chile the presidents of UNASUR pretended to be like concerned firefighters for the Bolivian and regional situation.

Allende was murdered at the same time as he preached to the four winds his “confidence” in the “Armed Forces’ loyalty to institutions of government” and at the same time as he pressured to disarm any hint of the independent action and self-defence that the working-class and peasant masses were starting to organise.

It is a lesson that has been repeated one and a thousand times: he who demobilises and disarms the mass movement in defence of the “institutional” path when reaction is raising its head – and reaction does not really believe in “institutions” but only in the force of events and of weapons – is preparing historic defeats.

The Media Luna as a racist enclave
“On your knees, Indian shits“, “shout: long live [Sucre's] status as capital!“, “Sucre will be respected, damn it!“, “Out of here, shits from the Altiplano“.

One issue which needs to be stressed in any analysis of Bolivia is how the de facto partition of the country has moved forward. The truth is that this process appears to have covered quite some ground already. This has happened irrespective of fresh calls for “dialogue”, “truces” and “compromise”.

Once such a process as this is on the march, expressing all the grievances of various sections of the upper and middle classes and the déclassé masses (the social base of the right-wing) it seems that realistically there can be no return.

With this umpteenth set of negotiations, the right wing simply want to buy time and get themselves out of a situation in which they do not come across well.

That is why they have stopped short of crossing “the Rubicon”: perhaps the scales fell from the eyes of the governors on August 10th given the magnitude of the support for Evo Morales. But the reality is, this path was abandoned long before.

To qualify what we are saying, there is a very serious process taking place, of a more “social” than purely “political” character, which to us seems to express the real dynamic of the secessionist process we are describing in a much sharper and more profound fashion than any “statutes of autonomy” can. This is the process of near-ethnic cleansing they have put into action (more or less openly so in each province). Ethnic cleansing which is making more common events like those which happened a few months ago in Sucre, capital of Chuquisaca province.

That is to say, the massacre in Pando, based on race (and class: the comrades were peasants) could not have “fallen from the sky”: the increasingly common events which have made it commonplace for peasants and indigenous people to be beaten, spat at and vilified paved the way for this.

This is typical of a racist enclave: the “white” population of Santa Cruz will continue to be – in the medium term – in the minority given the population “tidal wave” coming from the west of the country in search for work opportunities in the region, given its greater economic dynamism.

“Since the 1950s Santa Cruz has grown thanks to state investment, foreign loans (from the USA), oil royalties, an agricultural boom and narco-trafficking profits. This growth, like state plans for settlement, have in the last four decades stimulated the immigration of Quechua and Aymara people arriving from the poorest regions of the Andes. Currently, the population of the province (2 million) is more than 25% composed of people of Andean origin. The reaction towards this flow of kollas (Bolivians from the Andes) is reflected in the intensification of  regionalist sentiment, which defends Santa Cruz’s people, “cambas” (an old-fashioned pejorative term for “indigenous labourers” which is now used as a positive expression of regional identity)”.

This is the same thing that is happening in all of the provinces of the Media Luna. A type of redoubt where not only the capitalist character of the Bolivian state but also racial oppression has been sharpened in the extreme. This has, for obvious reasons, symbolically speaking been attenuated at the national-state-level, but as if in a mirror-image it has been infinitely exacerbated in the east of the country.

“Even when they dress up like indigenous people [for festivals - JLR and MC], the Santa Cruz élites continue to stress their urban-cosmopolitan whiteness as an expression of their ambition to participate in an idealised ‘global’ upper-middle class consumerist society”.

Finally, the situation has a growing “counter-weight” – not only the fact that the Integrated North region of the Santa Cruz province has a majority indigenous-peasant population from the Altiplano. But also the immense urban population concentration represented by the Plan 3000 barrio [neighbourhood], an enormous working-class and poor citadel of “kolla” immigrants in the very heart of Santa Cruz. Pay attention to this: these immense reserves for the mass movement in the country are showing ever greater signs of organisation.

The fascist shock troops

“In El Porvenir, the hit-men boasted of having killed more than a hundred indigenous people and began a pursuit of the mayors of the municipalities where [most people voted yes to Morales] in the 10th August recall referendum”.

Along with the above, a new factor in regional politics we have to understand the importance of is the emergence of significant fascist shock-troop formations in the east of the country.

Not every day do irregular counter-revolutionary formations emerge, recruited from sections of the upper class student population in the east combined with a déclassé mass base and whose method of “political action” is violence against the exploited and oppressed, pure and simple.

The situation is very serious and the classic warning of revolutionary Marxism (and Leon Trotsky himself in his brilliant writings on fascism) is that we must not let them raise their heads.

That is to say, we have to confront the violence on its own terms: you don’t discuss with fascists, you fight them. That is the most classic of teachings, proven by the history of the class struggle in this field.

The very existence of these irregular right-wing groups dedicated to habitual beatings of men, women and children for being indigenous is another expression of how far the situation of latent civil war the country is experiencing has come.

It is also a clear indication of the ever more openly counter-revolutionary course of the ‘civic’ oligarchy in the east. It is clear that the existence of these irregular formations and their ability to sustain themselves over time is due to someone funding them! And the people funding them are none other than the Media Luna bourgeoisie.

But furthermore: to tell the truth, formations like the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista have existed for years. They are a real “institution”, dependent on the regional Civic Committee. Many of the Civic Committee’s current leaders were in “the Unión” when they were young.

A clear indication of this “institutional status” is the fact that the Unión Juvenil has its own group nickname “Kerembas” (Guaraní for “warriors”) and their motto is “our identity shall endure if the youth fight for their people…”
Faced with the emergence of these formations, the fact that peasants are beginning to organise self-defence in the region, and in Santa Cruz in particular, is of enormous value. In various media we have seen photos of several peasants armed with guns. This is very good news: now each workers’ and peasants’ trade union must form armed self-defence committees!

This step is necessary for two reasons: first, no-one can defeat the exploited and oppressed classes if they are organised. Second, the best “prescription” faced with irregular fascist formations has always been to teach them a lesson before they grow. That means that the movement of the masses has to “bind together” like them too.

If this does not take place, serious demoralisation can start to set in.

The acts we are talking about will worsen if they go unpunished: this was the tendency leading to the last massacre in Pando, when the popular uproar was so strong that the government had no choice but to imprison the governor of the province: this was nonetheless a popular conquest (but only if they do not free him in a few days’ time…).

The detention of Fernández showed up the government’s manner of operating: not in any way calling on the masses to crush the traitors. On the contrary, it has a continuing policy of telling them to stay at home and let “the institutions do their work”.

One last reason for the existence of formations like the UJC and others has to bee the situation whereby the various fractions of the bourgeoisie are still unable (or have not managed to) openly appeal to the Armed Forces against the civil population. In these circumstances, then, they call on these fascist groups to do their dirty work.

In any case, this is also a lesson and an experience which must be taken into account in other countries of Latin America, where even if the situation is not as polarised, reactionary plans are in the works.

The role of the Armed Forces

As we have just commented, one of the “enigmas” of the current political situation in Bolivia is what will happen with the Armed Forces. The Armed Forces are characterised by the contradiction that a majority of them are still conscripts from indigenous backgrounds, but this does not stop them from having a brutally anti-worker and anti-popular historic tradition.

With the limited “exception” of the experience of nationalist episodes under the presidencies of Busch, Toro, Ovando and Torres, the Bolivian popular memory associates the army with repression in the service of the exploiters – and justly so. This has been expressed in a series of brutal massacres of mineworkers and peasants, massacres which peppered the history of the country practically throughout the last century. On many occasions they also gave significant political support to attacks on the peasantry and mineworkers (for example in the case of the 1960s dictator Barrientos).

The 21st century began with the precedent of deaths in the February and October 2003 strikes and in June 2005, not to mention the two miners killed (on the orders of the current national government…) just a month ago.

This does not take away the fact that there are real contradictions, which explains the alignment it has shown “with the constitutional government” up until now. It is not clear what would be the “deal-breaker” for the Armed Forces (a national and centralised institution par excellence) to accept the partition of the country. Besides, the ignominious results experienced with military dictatorships in the past (like in the rest of the region – at least up until know) are still regretted.

And if the above is not enough for them, the fact remains that the Morales-Linera government is not even grazing the basis of Bolivian capitalism, and moreover it recently achieved a clear electoral majority…

However, herein there is another typically suicidal problem with the policies of the MAS government: trusting in the Armed Forces’ attachment to “the sanctity of institutions”.

In an interview with Evo Morales a few months ago, when faced with the question of the role of the Armed Forces in the country’s political process he replied: “[The Armed Forces] have always been very much identified with it. This made an impression on me despite the fact that all the people at the very top are older than me. I, Evo, as an ex-soldier, respect them and respect myself. The military respect the sanctity of institutions”.

However, as if to display their independence, a few days ago the Commander-in-Chief Raúl Trigo gave a warning sign when he warned “against Chávez’s interference in the country’s internal affairs”.

But there is a basic problem besides: the Armed Forces are the institution par excellence of the bourgeois state and in any turn of events may come to the conclusion that the right-wingers would be better guardians of the system than the Morales government and then make an about-turn.

Indeed, a few months ago the sociologist Eduardo Paz Rada of the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés warned of the grave risk which might come from the state security forces, commenting that “the bodies who have the power to stave off any separatist excesses are the Armed Forces and the Police. I have the impression that within these bodies divisionist tendencies are beginning to emerge, which could bring about a much more chaotic and unstable situation in Bolivia”.

In any case, no-one can help but notice the Armed Forces’ reticence towards intervening in the recent crisis and the kid-gloves with which it acted when the state of siege in Pando was finally announced; to the extent that rumours were going round that Evo Morales was “angry” by the shameful behaviour of soldiers at the time of the occupation of the national state’s buildings in Santa Cruz.

To summarise: at any moment and at any fresh turn in the crisis, the Armed Forces may make an about-turn, and therefore, Morales’ suggestion when he called for confidence in them, would be shown up in all its suicidal character.

It is this very reality which makes necessary the organisation of workers’, peasants’, students’ and people’s self-defence to stop the fascist shock-troops like the UJC, and at the same time political work among the conscripts is necessary, with the aim of stopping them shooting on the exploited and oppressed.

Between restraint and radicalisation – the MAS, the COB, the peasantry and the working class

The third suicidal aspect of Morales’ government’s policies is his “restraint” of the movement of the masses. It may well be that this ends with the conclusion that “they always fall on our side, not on theirs” and the realisation that the government always offers “the other cheek”… ending in demoralisation.

It was not by chance that a product of the national uproar at the massacre in Pando forced the government to imprison Leopoldo Fernández. But the government’s overall policy has not been like this: but rather always to let attacks and brutal insults go unpunished at the same time as restraining the indigenous, peasant, people’s and workers’ mobilisations as much as possible.

On the other hand – to cap it all – the government did not think twice about repressing the miners struggling for pensions reform, claiming two lives in Caihuasi, Oruro province.

However, in these weeks of traitorous coup-plotting, and above all after the Pando massacre, criticisms of the government from the left have started being raised. To clarify: is its clearly the case that among the majority of the peasantry, the indigenous people and the poor (but not so much among the working class) there is still support for, and confidence in, the Morales government.

Besides, the mechanism of polarisation is this: the country is divided between the government and the fascist and racist government in the east. This being the case it is very difficult in these circumstances (albeit absolutely essential) to swim against the current and proclaim oneself for a course independent of the reformist government.

However, despite this, in the most acute days of the crisis, you only had to listen to the radio to find a resounding example of a very wide section of the masses showing themselves to be to the left of the government.

This was not only expressed in the demands they voiced. Also in that – as we have already shown – they made the first steps in taking self-defence as part of organised social movements; armed in some cases (above all, with peasants in the east); and the plan they outlined (and continue to do so today) of mobilising in Santa Cruz to crush the traitiors. This could happen again in the case of a new break-down in negotiations and/or an escalation of clashes.

In this situation it was necessary to call for the creation of independent organisations of struggle and the independence of the masses’ organisations with respect to the Morales government, as well as self-defence and people arming themselves.

In the first instance this is necessary within the COB itself, although, unfortunately, its executive has recently made a step in precisely the opposite direction, sealing an “alliance” with the Morales government which can only serve to deny it independence.

Indeed, the role of the working class in the process which has unfolded since 2003 has always been a complex one. The working-class miners were in the forefront for the exploited and oppressed throughout the last half-century.

However, unfortunately, with the tin crisis and the pro-privatisation Law 21060 (which shut down the main mining centres) it suffered a physical and political defeat from which – until now – it has only been very barely able to recover. Given this fact, the principal organising centre of the working class miners which Huanuni now represents is of strategic importance.

But it is also true, as our current has argued, that the huge centres of mass radicalisation like El Alto (the same could be said of Plan 3000, a suburb of Santa Cruz) are a terrain for coming together and the emergence of a new working class, with new sectors of wage-earning and/or casual workers who can play a certain “relief” role for the miners. Indeed, we know of the increasing strength of trade unions like the manufacturing workers’ union (unfortunately it is in the hands of MAS) in El Alto.

However, herein lies another problem to overcome, which is not “structural” or “material” but rather political and ideological: the new generations of workers seem to come with almost zero prior experience. And, besides, given the retreats of the working-class miners, what serves as the identity for the exploited and oppressed majority is a justified, but too-narrow, “indigenous” identity.

In these circumstances, the working class is still unable to play a central role, except for groups like the Huanuni miners or the urban teachers’ unions of La Paz (which also has good density and a tradition of struggle).

We must add reference to the evident weakening of the COB as such to what we are describing. A weakening which successive leaderships – from adaptation to the MAS government to “ultra left” detours, raising loud slogans which have not been able to build bridges with the indigenous and peasant populations – have not managed to resolve.

This challenge is no simple matter. We are also burdened with the history of the narrow “demand-mongering” of [long-time COB leader] Lechín’s tradition (although he always made use of “ultra-revolutionary” slogans) which is still a commonplace in the COB leadership.

Part of this is the extreme blindness shown when moving towards working-class political independence with the establishment of a Workers’ Political Instrument. At the least, they ought to be able to learn from the Chapare coca-growers, who did set up a political instrument, the ancestor of today’s MAS… To all the above is added the MAS government’s policy of disdain for the working class. This is two-sided: an ideological loincloth which is meant, purely and simply, to “erase” the very existence of the working class as such with a more or less “indigenous” discourse, as embodied in the ideas of important intellectuals in the country like vice-president Álvaro García Linera.

But, besides, we must not for one moment forget that Morales and Linera stand for a “model” of “Andean-Amazonian” state capitalism. That is to say, their strategy is constrained by the limits of the system, challenging only certain aspects of the “neo-liberalism” of the 1990s: a challenge which is in many ways more symbolic than it is concrete. Never, never do they question private property as such!

Similarly, we must never forget that – as a social sector – the peasantry defends private property, meaning that it does not put capitalism into question. In the heads of Morales and Linera, in the last instance, “people have to work and pay rent”, which they supposedly want to “redistribute”.

Therefore the government’s policies for the working class have not ceased to be extremely conservative, to say the least. The current government appears to have no embarrassment about recognising that this is “the unresolved agenda of the MAS government”. As the news agency Bolpress commented a few months ago “the manufacturing workers’ protests in Cochabamba are of great political significance at this time of transition. Workers and middle-class employees have grown distanced from the Morales government, because their living standards have not improved, unlike other social sectors like the peasantry and indigenous people who have benefited from state bonds and assistance programmes. At a recent national meeting, the rural teachers, one of the most important parts of MAS’s social base, explosively argued that Morales had fulfilled none of his promises and had categorically denied any prospect of increasing salaries in line with inflation [any similarity with other countries in the region is pure "coincidence" - JLR and MC]. In Bolivia’s political transition this is an unresolved problem, which vice-president García Linera described as “an unresolved government debt” when referring to the “group of employees with fixed salaries”".

The Morales-Linera government is a popular front reformist government whereby mass organisations manage the bourgeois state. However, it has the peculiarity that it is not a reformist working-class leadership which is heading up the state, but rather the indigenous peasantry and representatives of the middle-class intelligentsia.

In these circumstances the working class must forge its own path to be able to carry out an independent role in the national crisis, casting aside and overcoming the reformist (and ever more suicidal) limitations of MAS.

With this in mind, as a centre around which to secure its hegemony in an alliance of workers, indigenous people, peasants and the poor it must make steps to establish an “institutional framework” alternative to the bourgeois state: a Workers’, Indigenous People’s and Peasants’ National Popular Assembly like that which began to be created in El Alto during the May-June 2005 uprising.

Revolution or counter-revolution

What is the political dynamic in which the country has been immersed? This is a good question which entails a contradiction. Given how far events have moved, it is hardly realistic to believe that, in spite of everything, the process will end with the imposition of MAS’s reformist perspectives.

What is the contradiction? That the demands and the programme of the right-wing leaders have now come so far: not only are they “simply” reactionary, but their course is now touching on an openly counter-revolutionary dynamic.

Clearly, this still has its limits. The majority of Latin American governments are not as yet in favour of a success for the secessionists: we must not forget that many of them are of a “post-neo-liberal” background.

Besides, we have to look at the dynamics of the international situation (including the American elections) where although there are no substantial differences between McCain and Obama there are important differences of tone.

Nonetheless, we insist: we believe that now things have come too far. It is not everyday that an almost open secessionist coup is ordered and people are given free reign to carry out a mounting ethnic cleansing. When this happens, there is no way forward for more “dialogue” like that which has been called for.

The dynamic of the current state of affairs puts on the political agenda the choices of revolution or counter-revolution. A few days ago a sharp analyst wrote the following: “Bolivia is on the brink of civil war. Although the government and opposition leaders have agreed to sit down to negotiations, rebellions are very difficult to hold back once they have broken out, and their own dynamics lead to radicalisation. No political resolution is possible when the law, the legitimately elected authorities and the rules of democracy are ignored. When disputes are resolved by the use of force, the people with most fire-power win”.

It is for this very reason that the Morales-Linera strategy (a middle-way and Andean-Amazonian state capitalism) is not only suicidal but completely unreal. There is nothing “realistic” about continuing to raise expectations in a negotiated way out of the crisis.

On this issue, the government’s policies have shown all their “credentials”: How can it give credence to the “willingness to engage in dialogue” and “respect for institutions” of the eastern bourgeoisie and its ever more openly counter-revolutionary course?

This is impossible: it is necessary to go for social revolution or it will be the secessionist counter-revolution which will shape events in the heroic land of the Altiplano.