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The world is watching
Por translated by Zapata -
Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2003 at 5:55 PM
translated from http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2003/10/141413.php
In the middle of a general strike, with La Paz taken over by soldiers, with confrontations on numerous places in the country and marches of workers and farmers towards the capital, today was another historic day for Bolivia. The seasoned companions of the Katari Information Group tell us that "holding a watch in El Alto, the locals haven't slept. Brave, hardened indigenous men, women and children. They prepare themselves for another day. It is a day of burials amidst tears and sorrow. Humble coffins carry the martyrs of the defense of the natural resources....
Our brave friends of Econoticias report that "From Cochabamba, in the center of Bolivia, another front has opened. There are skirmishes between civilian demonstrators and police in several places in the third most important city of the country. The blockades are expanding, the coca growers and indigenous peasants already have made their impact in Chapare and several other provinces. There are blocked roads, together with teargas and gunfire. In the east, in Santa Cruz, the wealthiest and economically most important region, there are popular mobilizations, still small but growing. From Yapacaní in the north, a march is on it's way, there are blockades. In Potosí, in the Southwest, everyone participates. The marches continue and grow in each town where there are indigenous farmers and workers, over the entire nation."
Indymedia El Alto, also from the heart of the revolt, tells us "we see that what begins with a local strike turns into a popular uprising... The slaughters of Ventilla, El Alto, La Paz and San Julian are a landmark in the struggle for an end to the neoliberal regime... Still few details are known about the massacre (and torture) that happened in the army barracks, against soldiers who refused to shoot people. There is talk of conscientious objectors and of 15 dead soldiers... "
From the barricades of Cochabamba, our friends of Indymedia report that "youths, students, locals and coca growers maintain barricades on the main roads of the city centre, interrupting traffic and paralyzing the economy. The tense calm is broken with explosions of bars of dynamite and fireworks that are thrown by the demonstrators to the police".
The government of Sanchez de Losada, lying as usual, struggles between stepping down and continuing the slaughter. Numerous reports speak of North American weapons arriving at the El Alto airport. According to our comrades from Bolpress, the the government still feels strong because it has received the support of Bush and "the message sent by the Secretary General of the O.A.S., Caesar Gaviria, in which the endorsement of President Sanchez de Lozada by the 34 member states is expressed". In this message, the states "condemn in unanimously the use of violence and force to change the constitutional order". Within these endorsements, there ws also a wrathful and ambiguos declaration of the Argentine Government.
In La Paz, there are reports that masked officers are arresting civilians. Among the prisoners is feminist Maria Galindo. She fears the government intends to arrest various prominent people to charge them with "sedition".
Governments do not realise that people in the whole world are watching, suffering and fighting side by side with our Bolivian brothers and sisters. In our country, after the big show of solidarity yesterday, new and massive outings of solidarity take place, in marches (2) and blockades of bridges. For tomorrow, Wednesday, a new and great demonstation of solidarity has been announced, at 16 hours., from Av. Belgrano and Entre Ríos to the Embassy of Bolivia (500 Av. Corrientes).
Now is time
Por Partido Obrero -
Friday, Oct. 17, 2003 at 9:27 AM
EDITORIAL
NOW IS THE TIME
The beautiful and
impeccable rallying cry of the Bolivian Revolution
Jorge Altamira
The insurrection in Bolvia is a call to order for those who have dared to bury the "Argentinazo" in the past. It is true that the explosion of the people was provoked by the policies of a "Menemist" government and that very same thing would have been provided by a victory for Menem in the last elections. The Argentine bosses have managed to "escape" with the Duhalde's and with the Kirchner's. But for how long? The signing of the accord with the IMF, the payment of a foreign debt of incredible magnitude, the freezing of wages, the re-privatization of the privatizers and fresh subsidies, the "barter" of the foreign debt for education and housing, the pressure of the international creditors, the "penal code" to confront the piqueteros: where is this taking us except to Bolivia, which is to say, the second edition of our December 19-20?
The daily Ambito Financiero (14 Oct) very correctly attributed the Bolivian uprising to the piqueteros. In effect, the peasants of the high plateaus (with their road and highway blocks) and the unemployed of El Alto are nothing more than a replica of the piqueteros. The fact that they find themselves in the vanguard of a gigantic revolution shows that they concentrate the historic experience of what has been, ever since the '40's, the most advanced proletariat in Latin America. The piqueteros of Bolivia now march together with the factory workers, the miners, the teachers, the students and with the masses as a whole, to overthrow the power of the bourgeoisie.
They have erred, then, and badly, those who insist, in Argentina, on denying the revolutionary potential of the masses who are organizing in Berazategui or in Ledesma (Jujuy), in Ensenada or in Tartagal (Salta), in Moreno and La Matanza or in Caleta Olivia and Río Turbio, in Resistencia and Barranqueras or in the San Juan capital.
There is a thread which runs through the Bolivian revolution. The colonial mitas (exploitation in mining) led to indigenous insurrections in the 18th century; as social plundering impelled the guerilla of Upper Perú; tin led to the revolution of '52 and oil to that of 1971 (Popular Assembly); and gas now (and genetically modified potatoes) the revolution in course at the present time. That is, exploitation for private gain and for the world market.
But the Bolivian revolution is not only due to this. As decisive as the domination of international monopoly is, Bolivia has constructed under its shadow a kind of capitalist development. And it is precisely these capitalists who find themselves in complete bankruptcy: eight out of every ten companies cannot affront their debts. Neither can they be rescued by the State or by the banks. The foreign debt, "pardoned" several times over, is no more than 20 per cent of the Bolivian GNP, but it is enough to destroy public finances. There is a real process of dissolution of capitalism, which explains perfectly well why even the social classes that voted for Sánchez de Lozada participate in the insurrection or maintain their neutrality. But the financial collapse and the economic bankruptcy are no monopoly of Bolivia's, as we ourselves well know, as do the Brazilians, the Russians and the Asians (and now the Californians).
Given its social breadth the Bolivian insurrection is reminiscent of that of Nicaragua of 1979. Only between August and October of the year before, Somoza had massacred 50,000 insurgents in his eagerness to crush the people's uprising by military means. In Bolivia it is a question also, neither more nor less, of the intervention of the peasantry, that many times in the past was the rear guard of the governments.
The Bolivian insurrection possesses an enormous historic density, because the Bolivians know that the plunder of gas signifies a new tombstone over the possibility of national existence. It is not the gas, then, that is at stake but rather the restructuring of Bolivian history upon new social foundations.
Just as Che thought, anticipated, understood through intuition, Bolivia is an epicenter of revolution in South America. For completely bankrupt capitalist regimes, as are those of the surrounding countries (including, especially, Brazil), the victory of the Bolivian revolution is a mortal danger. Skipping over the laws of history, the destitute Bolivia may become, all of a sudden, through the action of its exploited, a model of development for other more developed States.
This explains why Yankee imperialism has snapped to attention, not only for the gas deals, which is not even in the hands of the principal international monopolies. The order was, just as when the Iranians rose up against the Sha in 1979, bullets and more bullets; no other intermediary party enjoys the confidence Bush has as a factor capable of controlling or obstructing the insurrection of the masses. The OAS, with Kirchner, Lula and the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) of Uruguay, among others, have cowered before US imperialism. The question is they can discuss with Bush the FTAA tariffs or diplomacy with Cuba, but they have no position independent of their master's in the face of a workers and peasants revolution. At the decisive moment they have not uttered a single miserable word in favor of the human rights of the oppressed massacred in Bolivia. That these oppressed have transformed themselves into revolutionaries has eliminated all democratic sensitivity in them.
Bolivia has laid bare the counterrevolutionary character of democracy and of the democratizing, especially those of the left. Lula reached government bent on preventing a breakdown in the banking system and, its counterpart, the Argentinazo. Faced with Bolivia, he has shown that that bent is decidedly strategic. In 1995 the Partido Obrero broke up an International Conference of the San Pablo Forum, in Montevideo, because of the refusal of the parties present there to expel from their midst a nationalist Bolivian party that had backed, as a member of the government, marshal law and the use of repression against a general strike in Bolivia. In the government or still in the opposition those parties today support the OAS.
In Bolivia leftist democratism has been exposed with the efforts of Evo Morales to boycott the insurrection in function of assuring himself of the 2004 municipal elections. The revolution is serving the interests of the right-wing, he has said, as something which seems to have turned into a fig-leaf for the Lula's, the Ibarra's, etc., in order to justify their dirty work. Frei Betto has just said the same thing to justify the alliance of the PT with the Brazilian land-owners and bankers and with imperialism. Trotskyism, as occurs in Brazil, should be ready to govern, a runt of porteño intellectuality has recently declared. After having proclaimed it "utopia" the democratizers have now turned it into a "provocation" that would serve imperialism itself, with whom they have united in order to drown the Bolivian revolution.
After having attempted to negotiate the gas decrees with Sánchez de Lozada, now Evo aims to limit the overcoming of the crisis to the mandate-holder stepping down. But even a constituent assembly convened on the basis of the old regime would be a defeat for the revolution. For there to be a sovereign constituent [assembly] it is necessary for the masses to overthrow the government and that their organizations take power.
What distinguishes above all the Bolivian insurrection from the "Argentinazo" is the exceptional concentration of historic, absolutely immense energies of the Bolivian worker and peasant piqueteros. That is what is summed up in the slogan of the neighbors of La Portada, a neighborhood that dominates from the heights the highway going from El Alto to La Paz: "Now is the time."
An answer to the dilemma that, from the times of the Bible, has pursued humanity: If not now, when?