Volume 6, No. 10, October 2005

- Akhil

Bolivian president Carlos Mesa went tumbling down the throne on June 6, 2005. About 4 lakh were marching on the streets in La Paz demanding his ouster.

Latin America seems to have gone into social tremors. Literally every country of the continent is seeing huge movements generated by the inhuman globalization that has pushed millions into poverty and the sprawling slums of the cities. The uprooted miners, labourers, peasants and indigenous people are uniting to wrest back what liberalisation and privatization has snatched from them. It took almost fifteen to twenty years for the people to realise about the devastating consequences of the neo-liberal policies when the real effects of the forces of globalisation shattered and uprooted their lives. They rose up to challenge the imperialist and capitalist forces of globalisation and their local henchmen. This, further precipitated the ruling class contradictions forcing one after the other presidents to resign. Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, all have seen a change of presidents. There are strong anti-regime movements in Peru and Chile. The mass protest movement in Bolivia has resulted in the change of four consecutive presidents since the year 2000.

Ecuador president, Lucio Gutierrez, was forced out of power on April 20, 2005. Two of his predecessors had met the same fate. In 1997, President Abdala Bucaram was ousted after only six months in office. Before him Jamil Mahuad was brought down after two years of his rule. Presidents of Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Haiti had to quit in the face of rising revolts and mass protests due to their economic policies which had pushed the countries into severe economic crises. In 2003, President Sanchez Lozada of Bolivia was forced out of office after he ordered army to quell the protesters. The army killed more than sixty persons in three weeks. And the latest victim of the people’s wrath again became Bolivian President Carlos Mesa who had succeeded Lozada. He was driven out of office on June 6, 2005. Two of his associates who were second and third in the line of succession were forced by the people’s movement not to assume presidency. The movement was withdrawn only after the Supreme Court justice Eduardo Rodriguez Veltze accepted the post of president as a stop gap official, promising fresh elections in December 2005.

The oppressed and poor Latin American people are in action bringing down their presidents one after the other. A wide array of political forces is active among the masses where every one of them wants to push the events in accordance with its own interest. The case of Bolivia is another example where vast multitudes of people are grappling with the problem of how to put an end to their miserable conditions of life, most of them agreeing that it is the imperialist plunder of their land that has led to the pathetic situation they are in.

The day Carlos Mesa was to step down a sea of nearly 4,00,000 people were demonstrating in the capital city, La Paz. Bolivia, a land of only 85 lakh people, is a land locked country in the Southern American Continent. Its countryside is nearly obliterated of human population as the imperialist imposed policies of liberalization have driven millions of rural people, peasants and mine workers to the cities to seek work there. The devastation caused by the pro-imperialist economic policies of the government can be gauged from the fact that the displacement of people from their traditional jobs forced them to come to the capital city in such huge numbers that El Alto, a city, sprang up on the hills near La Paz and swelled to one million in population in just 30 years! Here it is imperative to note that while the rest of the world was thrown open to unbridled imperialist plunder through the US-led new world economic set up in the nineties this process has been going on in Latin America since the early eighties as it has remained in US imperialist control ever since the Spanish colonialists hold was loosened here in the early nineteenth century. If US considers Central America as its backyard Latin America is considered by it as its exclusive sphere of influence.

El Alto has remained in the forefront of the mass struggle in Bolivia and brought down two presidents, Lozada and Meso, just in a span of two years. El Alto consists of uprooted indigenous peasants (called Indians) who flocked to the city as new policies of the government did not allow them to cultivate their traditional crops, as a consequence their agriculture was destroyed; miners from the vast mines which were closed down due to the fact that the imperialists were no longer interested in tin from Bolivia. Many thousands of families went to other places in the lower regions to produce coca as their lands now have been taken up by the US, British and Spanish oil companies because the land they tilled had gas under it. Since privatization, new estimates of the country’s gas and petroleum reserves have increased dramatically to 53 trillion cubic feet, second only to Venezuela on the South American continent. So, the US has reasons to frown on the people’s movement in Bolivia as most of the Bolivian gas and oil leads to its destinations in the US (California). Bolivian richness in the natural energy resources has become a cause for its abject poverty, only because the imperialist scramble for this source of energy has led to the dispossession of the masses.

The rulers, one after the other, have only continued the job of working for the imperialist interests. The anger of the people subdues with the downfall of one ruler but rises up again when the ground reality—the relation of the ruling classes with imperialism—does not change. The local rulers remain compradors; the imperialists remain the masters of the resources and the de facto rulers working from Washington. Before we come to deal with the new truce that has come with the fall of Mesa and coming to power of Rodriguez Veltze let us go through the events that led to Mesa’s presidency and his subsequent fall where the mass protest movement has played a leading role all through and forced many of the political leaders and the church to come up in their true colours. It is a vast canvas of social turmoil where every force has come up in a truly naked form and the advance of social consciousness (not yet class consciousness) through action has made its imprint.

The current struggle of the dispossessed in Bolivia is centred on the nationalisation issue of gas resources and to get rid of the politicians who are in cahoots with the transnational corporations. In 2003, when Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was forced to quit and flee to the US it was water that called the multitudes of the population to come to the streets and stop the privatization of water and its exploitation by the multinational companies. The Water Coalition of Cochabamba, a city in Bolivia, rose up to fight against the government’s decision to privatise the water system of the city to US-based corporation, Bechtel, in 2000. The huge mass struggle that went on for a full one month in April of that year forced the government to ditch the plan for privatising water. Bechtel was kicked in the belly and the government had to put its foot in its own mouth. The administration of the water system was taken over by the citizens’ and workers’ elected representatives’ self management team. This led to the realisation throughout Bolivia that people can force the government to retract the anti-people measures, firing into them a confidence that the have-nots and illiterate have immense power hidden in them only if they come up united on some issue. The mass movement for the control of the water system encompassed the workers, the petti-bourgeois, the commoners, and the poor of the city. Next came the struggle for oil and natural gas which had been denationalised in Bolivia in the mid-1990s.

The Bolivian oil and gas deposits have been a national property since 1937. With the coming of the multinational companies during many decades that followed, the need arose for the rulers to again nationalise these resources in 1970. But when privatisation occurred in the 80s, and new reserves were found, Bolivia became a hotbed of exploitation for British Gas, Spain’s Repsol and US’s Enron, and some from Chile and Argentina. A total of $ 3.50 billion was invested in poor Bolivia, where about 75 percent population is poor, a great majority among them being the indigenous Indian tribals. The already pauperised people of Bolivia, due to the pro-imperialist policies of their government, started discussing and taking up the issue of nationalisation of gas resources. Cochabamba echoed in their thoughts and many social movements, trade unions and indigenous groups started rallying around a single point—nationalisation of the gas and oil resources. So, the Water Coalition from a city level transformed into a Gas Coalition at the national level.

It was the fight for control of gas by the nation — i.e., nationalization — which led to a great mass upheaval in 2003. Here, we want to point out that when the majority of people considered the issue of nationalization they did not think about who controlled the State. As was reported in Guardian, London, (11 June, 2005) about a labour leader from El Alto, Roberto de la Cruz of the El Alto Regional Labor Confederation (COR), who said: "When we started this fight we were not interested in changing persons in the governmental palace. The objective was, and is, to recover gas in favour of the Bolivian State.

The Bolivians were poor before the denationalisation of gas and oil. They became poorer with denationalisation while multinationals earned crores in profits. Even the Bolivians had to purchase oil and gas at the international prices after coming out from the refineries in adjoining countries, though their state had sold it cheap to the multinationals. A double exploitation!

The demand for nationalisation of resources gathered fast support and the movement gained fast momentum. In September 2003, the Coalition for the Defence and Recovery of Gas held large-scale demonstrations demanding nationalisation of gas. The whole country witnessed a massive upsurge against the government which was more interested in serving imperialist interests than Bolivian. The struggle for gas was joined by the indigenous people of Altiplano, the area surrounding La Paz, who were struggling for their own rights and were being brutally suppressed by the government. The struggle for gas nationalisation, though it went on in all the major cities of Bolivia, yet the poor of El Alto were in the fore front, leading the political onslaughts on the government.

The Bolivian Workers Federation or COB, the El Alto Regional Labor Confederation (COR), and the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), were an important part of the 2003 movement.

With the killing of sixty people at the hands of the Bolivian army in the streets of La Paz, the El Alto raised the demand for Lozada’s resignation and prosecution. The government forces could not match the surging crowds of the militant people who indulged in street battles with the police and army. More deaths ensued and Lozada came to face opposition in his own government. Mesa, his vice president, denounced the use of force. Lozado fled the country, and assuming charge, Mesa promised to hold a referendum on natural gas in 2004.

Evo Morales, the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), whose party is the second largest block in the Bolivian Congress, played a central role in politically disarming the mass movement that erupted in 2003 and allowing Mesa’s installation as the new president.

But Mesa, who was another representative of the ruling classes serving imperialism, backed out from his commitment, and the referendum he carried on the issue of gas had no word of "nationalization" in it. The people rejected the referendum by writing "nationalization" across the ballots as asked by COB and most of the other organizations fighting for nationalization.

But Mesa "used the referendum results to justify his own neoliberal policies on the gas issue. He vowed that he would neither break nor renegotiate existing contracts with the transnationals. Mesa did agree to have Congress draft a new Hydrocarbon Law, but he expected it would not be much of a blow to the transnationals’ mega-profits," thus wrote a commentator.

Morales campaigned in favor of the July 2004 gas referendum, telling people that voting "yes" would mean imposing 50 percent royalties on transnational oil companies.

"Last March, however, Congress passed a Hydrocarbon Law that took Mesa by surprise. The new law not only kept an already existing requirement that levied 18 percent royalties on the profits of transnational gas corporations, but it also tacked on another 32 percent in taxes." The additional taxes contained in the measure antagonized foreign companies that have been reaping massive profits from the exploitation of Bolivia’s natural gas reserves. Mesa was furious that the law was too anti-transnational. It also fueled the wealthy elite’s, especially that of the eastern districts’, passion for autonomy.

Many participating in the movement for nationalisation objected to the 18 percent-plus-32 percent formula, preferring a straight 50 percent royalty. This was another twist in the nationalization movement — settling for increased royalties rather than nationalization.

As a study prepared by the Center of Information and Documentation of Bolivia points out, these "sales" are in any case fabricated, with the gas passing from a Boli-vian subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Repsol, for example, to an Argentine or Chilean subsidiary of the same corporation.

"Under these conditions, once Bolivian gas crosses the border, it is converted into thermo-electricity, liquefied natural gas, methanol (bound for the US and Europe) and other petrochemical products, which allows the transnationals to reap enormous profits at Bolivia’s expense," the study declares.

Things came to a head in May 2005, that had been brewing since April 2004 when the so-called referendum on gas was carried out. The people were living with a sense of betrayal shown by the new president. In May, Mesa ordered a decree calling for an assembly and a referendum. Just a week before the mid-May protests the Bolivian Congress rejected the nationalisation demand and decided to take a decision, instead, on holding a referendum for regional autonomy and not on the nationalisation of natural gas. The regional autonomy in today’s concrete context of Bolivia is: giving autonomy to the oil rich regions where the white settler minority owns vast lands and gas deposits. The "autonomy referendum" is obviously meant to placate the transnationals through the wealthy political elite of these oil-rich eastern states of Bolivia, especially Santa Cruz. These capitalists forces "with ties to" imperialist capital dominated transnationals "have threatened secession since October 2003 as a way of avoiding the nationalization of oil and gas." This dangerous decree from the president and the decision of the assembly further enraged the workers, peasants and poor and middle class masses of Bolivia and ignited their frenzy. The indigenous people of Bolivia constitute more than sixty percent of the population and are predominantly engaged in agriculture and work as miners. Their radicalization, due to the economic crises and dislocation, has brought them in conflict with the state along with other poor and middle class people.

The unity of these two vast sections of society became the danger signal for the exploiting comprador elite classes which want to break up the country in as many segments possible as their masters would require, in case the situation goes out of their control.

The US state department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said in early June that Washington was "in contact with the [Bolivian] government, we are also in contact with other nations that are very concerned and worried by the situation there." These other nations are apparently the presidents Nestor Kirchner of Argentina and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. The so-called "left" governments of these two countries pose their governments as alternatives to Washington’s policies in Latin America while vigorously following the line of the US imperialists and preside over the heads of the people with "left" phrase mongering while carrying on the same exploitative relations. They have only taken up some pro-people measures to hoodwink the masses. Likewise, they both fear the potential domestic impact of a continuing revolutionary crisis in Bolivia.

Boucher added that US discussions with the besieged government of Carlos Mesa were on the "security situation, about the situation as regards democracy and maintaining the democracy in Bolivia." Another US imperialist master told the Congressional sub committee on May 25, that "We are very concerned about serious challenges to Bolivia’s stability from radical opposition groups that threaten the country’s hard-won gains in democracy, economic development, and the fight against drug trafficking."

The whole thrust pointed that the US was considering intervening into Bolivia under the name of "democracy" and the "fight against drug trafficking." The unchallenged leader of the imperialist world was very much afraid of the democracy the people were enjoying through their fight against the imperialist exploiters and their local henchmen. The people had come on the streets and were ready to engage in serious battles as many of the miners were carrying dynamite sticks in their hands and waving and throwing these at the armed forces men. The awakened people were becoming a headache for the thug US.

The mood of the militant masses could be guessed from their determination to take on the military forces as one of them said that "We will even take up arms if the need arise to force nationalization of the gas resources."

The mobilization of the people was continuous and the city of La Paz was surrounded by tens of thousands of people of the El Alto Federation of Neighbourhood Associations (FEJUVE) from May 16. On this day itself, the people of Cochabamaba symbolically took over a refinery. All roads leading to the city of La Paz were blocked. More than 55 road blockades disrupted the main highways and commerce in seven of Bolivia’s nine departments or states. The El Alto Refional Labour Confederation called for a general strike to begin on May 23. The Gas Coalition, Workers Federation (COB) and Bolivian Peasant Worker Union (CSUTCB) and teachers and miners organizations supported the call and the whole of La Paz was blocked and paralyzed. Indigenous people from Aymara tried to occupy the presidential palace, Plaza de Murillo, and enter the Congress building on May 24. The street battles between the protesters and police continued for the whole day, with police using batons and tear gas and with ready to shoot snipers from the roof tops waiting for orders to shoot on the people. The people were able to push the police back and reach up to 60 feet of the Congress building. May 26 was declared a truce day by the people due to a religious holiday. Not only La Paz but also Sucre, situated at a distance of 200 miles in the South, Santa Cruz in the East and all other major cities were rocked by the surging crowds of the people. It looked as if the people had taken over the country everywhere and there was no government. The streets were in the hands of the people. The general strike really looked like a festival of the masses.

Meanwhile, on June 8, after receiving the green light from Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church in Bolivia called for a national dialogue-to unify the interests of the Bolivian land oligarchy and pro-transnational gas elite of the eastern states, on the one hand, with those of the moderate reform sectors of the popular movements, on the other. The moderate reform sectors include Evo Morales’s Movement Toward Socialism party (MAS), which, with Mesa, has repeatedly called for Church involvement. Later priests called from the pulpit for social peace, the abandonment of "extremism" and the reconciliation of the rich and the poor. But unions, social movement organizations and the radicalized base of peasant and indigenous movements clearly rejected this initiative.

The people again marched on La Paz on May 30 and refused to follow the demand of the MAS that the truce be extended to May 31 to give time to the assembly to consider the referendum on the question of autonomy and of convening a Constituent Assembly. Obviously, Evo Morales did not want the people to press for nationalization. But the upsurge continued to swell more and more, till on June 6th Mesa was forced to kiss the dust.

Meanwhile, the various political forces engaged in the whole turmoil were having their own agendas to pursue. Demands for Mesa’s ouster not only came from the residents of the El Alto poor but also the Eastern Agricultural Chamber, representing the country’s wealthy farmers. They wanted Mesa to crush the people’s revolt. Mr Vaca Diez, whose ouster was demanded by the agitating masses, wanted to take up the presidency after Mesa’s exit. He, an agri-businessman from the gas rich eastern state of Santa Cruz, belongs to the Leftist Movement Revolution, and had the support of the National Revolution Movement party of the former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada. He and the second next in line to him, the chairman and the leader of the lower house, Mario Cossio, had to bow out in the face of the growing demand of the people for their heads. See the names of their parties: "Leftist", "Revolutionary", and yet are mere imperialist boot-lickers.

Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) leader Evo Morales, who is a parliamentarian and fears the extra-parliamentary militant mass action on the streets did not associate himself with even the demand of "nationalization" for the bourgeois state let alone for a transition to Socialism. He tried to prolong Mesa’s regime by calling on the people first to vote in the April 2004 referendum, and later when Mesa was facing the deluge of the Bolivian masses in May and June this year he called on the people to accept regime’s proposal for referendum on autonomy and constituent assembly to divert the target fire. He tried to substitute autonomy for nationalization. It is another sure way of securing Bolivia for the imperialists. He wants his way to presidency through the so-called "democratic elections" as he could see that most of his followers in the workers and poor sections had switched over to the position of deman-ding the resignation of Mesa. He got afraid of the radicalizing effect of the movement.

Even most ‘leftists’ did not tell the people that the answer to globalization and liberalization was not the nationalisation of resources staying in the hands of the reactionary state but to smash the state itself, for a real break with imperialisms. The crucial question of the state was left untouched and fire was only directed at one or two persons rather than on the system as a whole. Unfortunately the Maoists in the sub-continent are still weak and only they that could provide the real answer.

The leaders of the current social upheaval in Latin America that set in motion the likes of Lula, Chavez and others, do not believe in dismantling the old reactionary and anti-people state structure to replace it with a new state of the workers and peasants and the nationalist sections in the bourgeois forces. In reality they want to go along with the existing semi-colonial state structure and system with some modifications, while blaring rhetoric, sometimes socialist, sometimes Bolivarian. This is no alternative to imperialism, imperialist globalization, liberlisation, et al within the existing system. This becomes obvious from the fact that one after the other such states go tumbling at the feet of one or the other imperialists. Even if they adopt some radical measures for too long they run the risk of going Allende’s way, making way for the worst kind of dictatorial rule over the people in the absence of a real preparation to confront the evil forces of imperialism. The people, on their part are continuing their glorious tradition of fighting against the forces of exploitation and oppression while leaderships are afraid to lead them to real victories over the local reactionary classes and their imperialist masters. Even in the current phase of the Bolivian struggle the army threatened to intervene, in case the movement gets more radicalized for a real revolution of the people. The US was ready to move its pawns in the game. It still has, though in a covert way.

MAS has become instrumental again in suspending the current struggle for nationalization under the pretext of giving time to the new president. The new president may not be an affiliate to a particular ruling class party like Mesa but he represents the same class interests of exploiters that have ruled this country for long. He has promised an "electoral process" for solving the problems facing the country. The trap has worked because the leaders spearheading the movement have not prepared the masses to grapple with the question of a real alternative to imperialism. The ‘left’ presidents in the South American Continent are not rare to find these days. But a real left alternative is still a cry. The people are ready for change, the leaders are not. So we can expect that the people would be in the streets again when December comes.

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