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Bolivia: workers and poor defeat right in referendum

President Evo Morales has won more than 63 per cent of the popular vote in Bolivia’s recall referendum, a substantial increase on his score in the presidential election in 2005 (over 54 per cent). Even in the Media Luna, the rich lowland areas dominated by the racist secessionists, Morales won more than 40 per cent of the popular vote.

In the run up to the poll Morales declared: “If the Bolivian people ask us for socialism, we will deepen [the process] towards socialism.î Well, the Bolivian people have clearly answered ‘yes’. Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) government should be as good as their word.

But Morales is already sending out his usual conflicting messages: one to the mass popular forces and quite another to the Bolivian ruling class.

First he told a cheering crowd at the presidential palace: “We’re here to move forward with the recovery of our natural resources, the consolidation of nationalisation, and the state takeover of companies.” Then he went on to thank the other governors, including the reactionaries in the Media Luna, and urged them to “work together” with him.

And what was the reaction of the big landowners and bourgeoisie  the oligarchs?

Ruben Costas, victorious governor in Santa Cruz, the heart of the reaction, said that his bid for secession would go ahead with “elections to the legislative assembly of Santa Cruz; creation of a security body parallel to the National Police, and an inland revenue department responsible for collecting taxes for the department”. In short, the right’s project of breaking away the oil and gas rich provinces under their rule will proceed, regardless of the vote.

The workers and peasants have waited and suffered at the hands of their tormentors; now is the time for Morales to reward them. He should immediately:

• Confirm the new constitution; the Constitutional Assembly passed it long ago and the right have been obstructing it ever since; bring it in now!

• Implement the land reform bill and the nationalisation of the oil and gas industries with no compensation to the landowners or foreign oil companies.

• Bring in the pensions law with all the amendments proposed by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB  Bolivia’s TUC))

• Bring in a living minimum wage and social security benefits by taxing the rich oligarchs and multinationals

The oligarchs organise

Originally the oligarchs, who until Morales’ election were the ruling elite, supported the motion for a recall referendum. But when it became apparent that Morales would win and several right wing governors could lose, they started a campaign of violence and blockades.

The week running up to the referendum saw the climax of their campaign. In Santa Cruz, the fascist Union Juvenil CruceÒista youth movement blockaded Morales at the airport. In Trinidad, capital of Beni, one of the Media Luna states, demonstrations and clashes prevented Morales from addressing supporters in a stadium.

Even presidents Hugo Ch·vez (Venezuela) and Cristine Fern·ndez (Argentina) were prevented from landing at Tarija airport in the south because of their support for Morales.

On Bolivia Independence Day, Morales was prevented from speaking in Sucre by threats of violence from right wing thugs, led by a former member of the MAS, Chuquisaca Governor, Sabina Cuellar. Cuellar, an indigenous woman, claimed that the right does not mistreat MAS supporters:

“On 24 May, the only thing [the rightists] did to those campesinos was take off their shirts and make them go around in the plaza – but they didn’t maltreat them.”

Cuellar, who was not up for recall, is actively siding with the right in humiliating indigenous people by forcing them to take off their clothes. When the opposition has to hide the white racists in its ranks, it finds an indigenous supporter, who crawled over the bodies of the peasants to get into power.

The security forces allowed these counter-demonstrators of a few hundred people to occupy and harass indigenous peasants, while attacking miners’ demonstrations. This should make any MAS supporter or socialist dismiss the military’s claim of neutrality.

Before the referendum, Percy Fernandez, the mayor of Santa Cruz, accompanied by governor Ruben Costas and civic leader Branco Marinkovic (two leading oligarchs), called on the Armed Forces “to overthrow President of the Republic,î adding ominously, “We will have to endure some more dead.”

Reports reveal that at least one of former president S·nchez de Lozada’s generals has taken them up on their suggestion by training up the young thugs to take over Santa Cruz. They have already occupied and trashed several government buildings and beaten up MAS supporters.

So much for democracy and the rule of law.

How to defeat the right

The vote will entrench both sides and increase the drift to civil war. The winner will be the side that takes the decisive steps to defeat the opposition.

The workers and peasants voted out the opposition in La Paz and the hated Manfred Reyes Villa in Cochabamba. Where the MAS did lose a governorship in Oruro, Morales still won 78% of the vote, implying the problem was with the specific governor not the reform programme.

Even in the five Media Luna states, where the right attacked and harassed MAS supporters, Morales achieved credible votes: half of the votes cast in Pando and Chuquisaca supported Morales, while more than 40 per cent voted for him in Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija.

Now the MAS – assured of the support of a large majority of the populace – needs to turn votes into action and crush the right. Both the Regional Workers Central of El Alto and the Confederation of Colonisers (a peasants organisation mainly in the Media Luna) called for mobilisations during the referendum. Now they should be joined by the COB and other workers’ and peasants’ organisations to prevent any secessionist moves in the Media Luna with demonstrations, blockades and a general strike to paralyse the oligarchs’ economy.

They should also demand arms  and acquire them by any means necessary – to defend themselves from the racist thugs and to counter any attacks from the army or police. They should demand that Morales introduces democratic rights in the army, including the election of officers and formation of councils of soldiers’ delegates). Only an armed people, free of the fear of military coups as well as fascist gangs, can fully enforce the land reform and expropriation of the oil and gas reserves

Popular committees should be set up to organise mobilisations and defence on the model of the El Alto FederaciÛn de Juntas Vecinales (Fejuve  Federation of Neighbourhood Committees).

But in addition to these mobilisations, the masses must demand that the MAS expropriates the oligarchs and the bosses.

• Take all the land and give it to the peasants

• Nationalise the banks and businesses of the oligarchs and place them under the control of the workers

• Take over the hydrocarbon industries and multinationals: no delays, no joint ownership, full nationalisation without compensation

• Sack the reactionary judges and civil servants who try to block the will of the people. Purge the army of the coup plotters and reactionary officers.

Cochabamba: the class struggle in one city

The governor of Cochabamba, the hated Manfred Reyes Villa, has been ousted from office in the recall referendum. He says he will not go and may put up a fight.

But there was an excellent opportunity to oust him back in January 2007 when he declared himself in favour of autonomy. Thousands took to the streets against him and set up a short-lived commune.

Sadly the commune was undermined and betrayed by the MAS and by Morales himself, who said the uprising was unconstitutional. The result was that Reyes Villa sneaked back into office a month later and has ever since been attacking the left.

Furthermore, a MAS councillor, Gonzalo Lema Vargas, who was chair of the state-wide electoral court during the neoliberal governments of Banzer Suarez and S·nchez de Lozada, has jumped ship. Vargas appeared on TV to denounce the legality of the referendum with the exact same arguments as Reyes Villa and his supporters. He also denounced MAS vice president Garcia Linera as a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘criminal’.

Vargas was one of the long-time figures of the right wing opposition, brought on board by the leadership of the MAS to win middle class votes in the city. The leadership of the MAS in Cochabamba is partly dominated by these neoliberals or “party barons” who left their discredited parties to hitch a lift with the MAS. These are the sorts of people who attacked the commune in early 2007 and have been undermining resistance to Reyes Villa. Now one of them has gone back to his traditional political home.

There has also been a hunger strike by workers at a Canadian-run shoe factory in the city. The 12-day hunger strike over the victimisation of a worker who was employed at the factory for 28 days was partially successful.

Led by activists of the local General Federation of Factory Workers in Bolivia (CGTFB), a handful of workers, including Oscar Oliviera, a leading activist in the water war of 2003, demanded full union support and government intervention to protect the worker Alejandro Saravia. The strike highlighted how workers have to sign away their rights when they are employed, how overtime is not paid for, how they are threatened and victimised by management, and the huge wage differentials.

Eventually management made some concessions and the labour ministry has promised to set up a commission. Local activists are demanding that the CGTFB takes action against the existing leadership of the union branch, which sided with the bosses during the strike.

At a press conference after the strike, the workers said: “The strike showed how our plight falls on the deaf ears of the alleged government of change – the only road possible for the nation’s workers was by their mobilising their own strength.”

A series of meetings and conferences are to take place throughout Bolivia to spread the lessons of the strike. Hopefully, it will lead to the unions and the COB taking greater action against the employers; and also actually acting on the various statements and motions during the past few years that have called for a political instrument of labour, i.e. a workers party.

This then is Cochabamba five years after it led the struggle for the nationalisation of water, and Bolivia after more than two years of Morales’ government. Where the bosses and governors still exploit and victimise workers, where there is still widespread poverty, and where sections of the MAS and union leaders do the bosses’ bidding.

Cochabamba is the embodiment of the twists and turns of the class conflict and revolutionary struggle in Bolivia. It was once the most insurrectionary city in the country, but has spent the past few years under the control of a right wing governor, who has been aided and abetted at crucial times by the MAS leadership. Hopefully it will now take its rightful place in the forefront of the Bolivian revolution.

International dimension

The fight taking place in Bolivia is crucial to the development of socialism in Latin America. Mass struggles are taking place throughout the continent, as old regimes are swept away and radical governments voted in, such as in Venezuela and more recently Ecuador and Paraguay.

Bolivia may be a junior partner to Venezuela, but it has been a beacon of struggle against neoliberalism in the past decade and has witnessed some important victories. Its huge deposits of oil and gas could benefit its own people and provide cheap power to other Latin American countries. That is why the struggle over secession is so important.

While the US was quick to commend the democratic vote and wish for a peaceful solution to Bolivia’s problems, its ambassador has been advising and organising the oligarchs about how to break away. The British government has even set up a consulate in Santa Cruz. As always in Latin America, look at imperialism’s actions to discover the class fault lines.

While the Media Luna states have no friendly neighbours, they do have oil and gas. Many Latin American states may in rhetoric attack the Media Luna bourgeoisie, unwilling as they are to encourage regionalism in their own countries, but would willingly do business with them.

Brazil’s president Lula has already bullied the MAS into honouring deals that do little to benefit Bolivia; so dealing with a new government that may offer more favourable terms in return for greater profits for a few oligarchs would not be a problem for him. Argentina has also shown itself to be capable of supporting its own companies that exploit workers, such as Sidor in Venezuela. Mexico, Colombia and Peru could also support the Media Luna in practice.

A Media Luna federation would quickly become a US base against Venezuela and any other progressive regime in Latin America, including what would be left of Bolivia. This in turn would undoubtedly push Ch·vez and Morales even further to the right. That is why it must not succeed.

• Socialists, activists and trade unionists in other Latin American countries should blockade any goods or equipment that would go to the oligarchs in their new state.

• Any attempt at secession and its recognition by the US or EU should be met by mass mobilisations throughout the Americas, including in the US, where pickets have already been held against US involvement. The US harbours millions of poor Latinos who are denied rights and harassed; the labour movement should come out in their support and against the policies that lead to such poverty.

What now

Will Morales rule for the workers and peasants with his new mandate? No. He leads a cross-class party that has both a left and a right wing within it, and that consistently concedes to the right. The workers and their supporters among the peasants, indigenous peoples and barrio dwellers need their own party.

The unions and the COB need their own party. The lack of a workers’ party means that they cannot effectively fight for unity between the working class and other oppressed sections of society, such as the peasants. Instead the unions can appear to be following a narrow “trade union” strategy that can separate it from the masses, as in the recent case with the strike over pensions in the run-up to the referendum, which the government portrayed as being part of a rightist plot.

A working class political party would be able to champion improvements to social security benefits, pensions, education and health. It would support nationalisations of the hydrocarbons, big business and the landed estates. It would be in the vanguard of the fight for indigenous rights, including where necessary self-determination and separation.

A workers party should support the MAS government wherever it enacts measures in favour of workers, peasants, indigenous people, and defend it against the right wing and US imperialism. But they must combat its every backward step, its every vacillation, its every surrender.

But a workers party should not give any political support to the muddled cross-class reformism of the MAS. It should fight to replace it with a workers’ and peasants’ government, one willing to arm the workers and prosecute the struggle against the oligarchs and end the domination of private property and capitalism. It would fight for genuine socialism, expropriation of the big banks and industries and plan to abolish inequality and poverty.

While socialists should demand the reformist leaders of the labour movement honour the COB’s own policy and immediately convene a conference to found a workers’ party, they should fight for such a party to adopt a clear revolutionary strategy to overthrow the capitalist state  its reactionary judges, bureaucrats and army officers  and create a workers and peasants’ government resting on armed popular committees, a workers’ state.

• Build a revolutionary workers party

• For a revolutionary workers and peasants’ government

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