The political crisis in Bolivia

JH
Posts: 402 Joined: 11-02-07
Submitted by JH on 19 September, 2008 - 10:40.

Statement by the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha on the situation in Bolivia

SOLIDARITY WITH THE BOLIVIAN PEOPLE! ---- THE FUTURE OF LATIN AMERICA IS BEING PLAYED OUT IN BOLIVIA! ---- The current events in Bolivia leave the organized anarchists of the FAG with a sense of alarm. The problem is not the defence ofa government with a nationalist profile and indigenous roots. It is the unconditional defence of the popular struggle of Latin American people. We have had and continue to keep organic contacts with Bolivian comrades since 2003, that is before the people's victory in the "Gas War", before the fall of Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, before the fall of the president who succeeded him, Carlos Mesa, and long before the MAS' election victory.

Even then it was clear to the FAG that the political game in Bolivia was a tough one, without legal or institutional limits. The struggle to build Popular Power ("poder popular") has various aspects and at the moment the Evo Morales and Álvaro Garcia Linera government expresses the wishes of the people to win back definitive sovereignty over their ancestral land. Evo does not do just what he wants, and neither does he govern with the bankers, like the ex-factory worker Lula. Today, the country that defeated neo-liberalism dozens of times is facing its greatest challenge. The various ancestral peoples and nationalities of the old Viceroyalty of Upper Peru, the traditional Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi societies and dozens of other ethnic groups, the living descendents in the melting pot of the cities, the heroic resistance of the miners, the cocaleros, of El Alto, of Cochabamba, the corner-to-corner street fighting in La Paz, all this has defeated the enemy several times. These people have made the organization of the social fabric, the practice of communal justice and grassroots alliances into the bulwark of the defeat of a system of rotten political parties, corrupted by the privatizations of the 1980s; with stones and dynamite they defeated the Army which operated under the control of the trafficker General Hugo Banzer; by promoting cooperative practices, they reject the poisonous presence of the oil transnationals, including the hateful sub-imperialist presence of Brazil.

The struggle is now an intestine one, against the oligarchy of the so-called Half Moon which dominates the departments of Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca and is controlled by the large landowners, soya farmers and drug traffickers in Santa Cruz, against the interests of the people. The Morales government is one of the targets, but these people are also aiming at destroying popular organization and the indigenous alternatives, the traditional, community forms of controlling social life, the re-appropriation by the people of the ownership of the subsoil and its natural resources. This struggle for autonomy is nothing more than the political will of an oligarchy allied with the transnationals, an attempt at a coup sponsored by the Department of State, the CIA and the DEA and financed with money stolen from the Bolivian people. The multitude of men and women who struggle for "autonomy" are mostly the employees, party members and supporters of these oligarchies. The situation of civil, anti-governmental disobedience in Bolivia at the moment is immense. On the left, the social protests are getting stronger and stronger and their demands are forcing Morales to do what a majority of the organized people propose. But on the fight, the oligarchy which also emerged victorious from the revocative referendum of the national and regional governments is devoting every effort to the chaos, the lockout and the economic blockade. They do not want to pay taxes to the government in La Paz, they want to keep for themselves all the wealth of the country, just as the banks suck our GDP and the squalid bureaucracy sucked the lifeblood of the Venezuelan PDVSA before the people gained victory in April 2002. Comrades, today in Bolivia there is a struggle against the oligarchy; it is a struggle which is part of the Latin American peoples' war against the chains of imperialism, masked under the macabre guise of globalization.

We must be clear about something, though. It must be stated that the FAG as an organization does not support the defence of any Statist or bourgeois government. Our support is as always for the process being carried on by the peoples who wish to defend their Bolivarian, Artigist heritage; it is for the political will of the social institutions and grassroots bodies who arduously combat the groweing bureaucracy in Venezuela and the vacillation that is typical of charismatic leaders, but without the organicism and due obedience to the people, as is proper for true socialist militants. Lastly, our struggle is alongside the Ecuadorian CONAIE (Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador), the Venezuelan ANMCLA (Associación Nacional Medios Comunitarios, Libres y Alternatives), the heroic COR (Central Obrero Regional) in El Alto and the entire popular movement in Bolivia.

The political impasse of the Morales government will need to be resolved by going beyond the legal possibilities. There is a popular left which lies further to the left of the recalcitrant vice-president Linera and the usual bureaucrats, who oscillate between the Latin American universities and governments with a veneer of nationalism. To the left of the MAS are the ex-guerrillas of the Movimiento Pachakuti, there is the El Alto Coordinación Regional, there are the social institutions such as Community Justice, there is an enormous organized social fabric that has no intention of consigning the country and the ancestral lands to the heirs of Cortés and Pizarro.

Another Battle of Ayacucho, another 1809 Uprising

In 1809, the courage of the young Bolivians refused to recognize the demands of Charlotte Joaquina of Spain to govern the Viceroyalties. This decision marked the direction of the liberation of America in the heart of the Continent. The realistic response soon arrived when the governor of Potosí, loyal to the colonialists, occupied the rebel towns militarily. In 1824 in the Battle of Ayacucho, the reaction was defeated both politically and militarily. But political independence did not guarantee the liberation of the peoples or bring Popular Power, Self-Management and Political Federalism. Almost 190 years later, the same struggle is with us again. The right is fighting against the advancement of popular power, the transformation of the National State into a public space under the people's direct control, the dismantlement of the bourgeois apparatus of social regulation. Today it is Bolivia's turn; in 2002 it was Venezuela's; three times over the past 11 years the people of Ecuador have rid themselves of a president; in December 2001 the Argentines defeated neo-liberalism and its plan to dismantle social life. Today the war of the Latin American peoples is marching towards their liberation in the Battle of the Bolivian Half Moon.

Defeat the oligarchy!
Defeat the CIA, the DEA and the US Department of State!
May the Bolivian people go beyond the limits of national government and advance along the road to Popular Power!
Because neo-liberalism and imperialism are the same filth!
Because Popular Power in Latin America will be built with struggle!
All solidarity to the Bolivian people!
The future of our brother country will be Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Tupi and popular or there will be no future!
Latin America will never surrender!
Popular Power, Social Self-Management and Political Federalism!

Porto Alegre, 13 September 2008

Federação Anarquista Gaúcha (FAG) – Fórum do Anarquismo Organizado (FAO) – in strategic alliance with the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU)

Translation by FdCA-International Relations Office

http://www.vermelhoenegro.org/fag

Discussion in Spanish on the crisis in Bolivia: http://www.alasbarricadas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=37476

davidbroder
Posts: 65 Joined: 30-08-08 Location: London
19 September, 2008 - 22:45

If this group are indeed anarchists, why do they solidarise with "the people" of Bolivia (which classes?) and why do they write "at the moment the Evo Morales and Álvaro Garcia Linera government expresses the wishes of the people to win back definitive sovereignty over their ancestral land. Evo does not do just what he wants"

The Bolivian workers' movement and activists have written at length about Morales' kowtowing to the oligarchy and strike-breaking with police (killing two miners last month: miners striking against a raise in the retirement age from 60 to 65 and the privatisation of the pensions system, which was sold off to Zurich Financial Services - click here). Andean capitalism is a panacea: it is indeed 'capitalism in the Andes'...

We've translated several documents by comrades in La Paz and also produced a pamphlet on the Bolivian workers' movement

Steven. ""Best hair at Unison conference""
Posts: 1854 Joined: 27-06-06 Location: London
20 September, 2008 - 01:37

Hi David, can we put some of those documents in our library here? Please feel free to post stuff here yourself by the way. (Nice meeting you the other day)

That FAG statement does seem pretty bad, but they were part of the loose international network of vaguely nationalist, leftist platformist groups around the WSM, so it's not very surprising.

davidbroder
Posts: 65 Joined: 30-08-08 Location: London
20 September, 2008 - 10:43

To be honest I'd never heard of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha, since I'm not really up on Brazilian (Portuguese?) anarchism. Presumably their call for political federalism is not meant to have any practical implications for the current attempts by oligarchs to win "autonomy" for sections of the country they control.

That said, at a (quite big - 90-100 people) Hands off Venezuela rally on Wednesday, the Bolivian Ambassador said that in his negotiations with the right-wing governors Morales did want to give them more autonomy, "just not too much" - much to the embarrassment of the assembled vicarious Bolivian and Venezuelan nationalists.

Of course it's OK to put the documents on the library here: the people behind Econoticias Bolivia seem to be Trotskyists and they're not very sharp on nationalisation by the bourgeois state, but nevertheless they are of interest since they're on the ground and have a good understanding of the trade union ans social movements.

I hope you liked the meeting, please do come to the next one.

JH
Posts: 402 Joined: 11-02-07
20 September, 2008 - 22:39
davidbroder wrote:
To be honest I'd never heard of the Federação Anarquista Gaúcha, since I'm not really up on Brazilian (Portuguese?) anarchism.

The Federação Anarquista Gaúcha is a regional group based in Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost state of Brazil. Politically they're very close to the FAU in Uruguay. If you're interested there will be more about them on anarchistblackcat and anarkismo. Thanks for the translations from Econoticias by the way. I'll come back to the issues here when I've got more time.

woundedhobo
Posts: 89 Joined: 16-02-04
21 September, 2008 - 01:08

decentralization without socialism usually means wealthy people hoarding wealth and protecting their privilege.

Are there leftist social movements in these eastern provinces combating the oligarchy or is the left mostly all in Cochabamba and La Paz?

JH
Posts: 402 Joined: 11-02-07
22 September, 2008 - 19:04
woundedhobo wrote:
Are there leftist social movements in these eastern provinces combating the oligarchy or is the left mostly all in Cochabamba and La Paz?

The leftist movements are mainly based in the Andean provinces in the west, including the mining regions of Oruro and Potosi as well as Cochabamba and La Paz. There's a vast social, cultural, political and economic divide between this part of the country and the lowland provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni and Pando. In the past the Bolivian economy was based on mining, in areas of the Andes with an indigenous majority. This is where unions and leftist social movements developed and where the majority of people live.

In the last 40 years or so mining has declined while the lowland areas in the east have boomed, with forests being cleared for agri-business, the input of money from the cocaine trade and the development of the city of Santa Cruz from a provincial backwater into the country's main economic centre. More recently the production of oil and natural gas from this area has become crucial. Bolivia accounts for about half of South America's gas reserves and is a major supplier to Brazil and Argentina.

Essentially the economy has moved from the mainly indigenous Andean west, where there's a tradition of union and leftist movements, to the mainly Spanish speaking eastern provinces which are pretty much under the control of the oligarchy and have closer economic ties to Brazil. Hence the attraction to Santa Cruz business interests of the idea of splitting up Bolivia, keeping the assets of the oil and gas reserves and getting rid of the liabilities of the Indians, the unions and the left.

I spent some time in Bolivia in 2004 and I got the impression that most people were expecting a drift towards civil war rather than a peaceful transition, seeing it mainly in terms of conflict between the Indians and the white and mixed race population. The policies of Evo Morales since his election in 2005 probably need to be understood in terms of keeping up a balancing act between the different forces, stopping open conflict and appealing to national sentiment with the nationalisation of gas, the anti-americanism and so on. If it came down to a military confrontation I doubt that the central government could keep control of the east of the country.

Edit: I've just got round to reading the commune pamphlet on Bolivia and it covers all this in much more detail and probably more accurately.

JH
Posts: 402 Joined: 11-02-07
27 September, 2008 - 23:07

Here's an interesting analysis (in Spanish) of recent events in Bolivia:
http://www.eutsi.org/kea/lucha-social/peru/vientos-de-guerra-civil-en-bolivia-pistas-para-orientarse-en-un-conflicto-a-cuatro-bandas.html
The article suggests that social movements in the rebel provinces are starting to organise to protect themselves, and that the massacre in Pando was part of a reaction to this.