BOLIVIA - HUANUNI

 

09-12-2013

By dismissals, salary cuts and smashing the gains the mine workers have won thank to our struggle and martyrs…

The Morales government tries to be offensive against such gains of the mine workers of Huanuni to continue plundering and guarantee for the transnationals the payment of 1 billion dollars obtained with the bonds selling to Wall Street and Morgan Bank…

DON’T TOUCH the 10 mitas and other conquests of mine workers! None layoffs!
Morales government and his ministries: Hand off Huanuni

INMEDIATE NONE-PROSECUTION OF HUANUNI WORKERS

The collaborationist leaders: OUT of COB, FSTMB and other worker organizations!
Set up an emergency mine workers’ Congress!
without bosses, neither “worker” ministries nor collaborationist bureaucrats

Nationalization without payment and under workers control of the entire branch of production, of all the mines in the hands of the transnationals and cooperatives!

Out Wall Street of Bolivia and Latin America! Out the cooperative bosses!

Out Evo Morales: neither anti-capitalist nor anti-imperialist,
partner of the Morgan Bank and US mines instead!

For a Revolutionary Government of COB based on self-organization and armament of masses!

Since weeks before, Morales government has sent his officials to control from the state the mine district Huanuni to intervene in the salaries and conquests of workers. The government, his employees, as well as the manager of the company, etc.,- different pro-government civil servants of Huanuni say it too- argue to intervene the company that Huanuni would be entering in a serious economic crisis. And this situation started during the last COB strike in last May this year when mine workers paralyzed the mine for more than 10 days.
Facing this situation, the mine workers convened a general assembly on August 28 to discuss these serious problems. There, the company employees, the manager, business director Mario Escalante informed that the company would be immersed in a serious crisis: the profits in the last months only achieved 700.000 dollars and the production cost is 11 to 12 millions of Bs (Bolivian Pesos). They also affirmed that in June the deficit was 100 millions of Bs and in July it increased to 200 millions of Bs. And 70% of the company’s profits are consumed for salaries and payments for the leaders in commissions doing particular tasks of the union; and the rest 30% are used for supplies and goods to produce.  The company even in that situation has guaranteed for the government the 37% income of profits and royalties taken from the selling of minerals produced by the Huanuni mine workers.
The government taking this question on a supposed crisis of the mining company, together with their employees would control it from the Staten. They have started to intervene in the wages of the whole mine workers of Huanuni to establish a salary roof.
Based on those economic numbers of the company, the government affirms the problem is the high cost of workers’ salaries, the 10 mitas of agreement the mine workers conquered by their struggle (it means from 1000 to 2000 Bs per worker) and for the government are illegal since they are not ruled by the boss laws. Thus, the government seeks to liquidate all the mine workers’ gains, plans to dismiss at least 500 mine workers, increase the rhythm and hours of productivity and propel “volunteer” retirements of over 500 mine workers since the 65 years old. This is an attack against the Huanuni miners all along the line! Morales and transnationals seek a reprisal against miners since they have dared to break the pact with which the leaders submit them during nearly two years by promising “nationalization of the whole mining sector”. Through this attack against miners, Morales wants to kneel down the workers as a whole. These are the results of the submission the miners were led by COB, FSTMB, and different SMTMH collaborationist leaders! No more agreements with the government of the transnational companies, servant of Wall Street!
The Mining Company of Huanuni in crisis?
Down with the commercial secret! Open the accounting entries of the whole branch of the mining production so that workers with the numbers in hands can prove that Transnationals by the hand of Evo Morales steal all the wealth of the country!
First, we must affirm that workers cannot believe what bosses say as well their paid employees who always hide from workers the true situation of the company. And the truth is that the Morales government is who really have control  on the mining company of Huanuni since he is who put or take away his representatives and members of the director board in COMIBOL who choose the manager of the Mining Company of Huanuni. “Each company will have a General Manager who will be engineer in mines, Local Director Boards with equally divided representatives of the company and workers (Worker Control, general secretary and conflicts) tied to a special regulation. The general manager will be named by the president of the director board and will be an engineer having at least 10 years of experience in the mining work.” (COMIBOL Statutes
Thus, we cannot trust in the accounting numbers presented by the managers to the miners to justify the “need” to reduce costs by cutting wages, layoffs, etc. Not by chance the Morales government made public the supposed crisis of the company just when miners challenged him going to the COB general strike in May demanding a decent pension. Due to the treason on the part of the COB leadership, the government detained over 300 miners among whom 18 are under prosecution. 
But how is it possible to affirm that the Mining Company of Huanuni is in a serious crisis? We, Trotskyists, affirm that the government speaks about “crisis of the company” to use it like a blackmailing to kneel down miners, submit them and punish the whole working class and in that way they want to make us pay for the crisis in the falling of mineral  prices. That’s why because even in the midst of the world economic crisis, the transnationals keep and want to continue making great profits based on the plundering and super exploitation of workers.
From the statization of the Mining Company of Huanuni in 2006, the company has been self-financed on behalf the sweat and work of the miners in the name of “the prosperity of the company”. Even without having any investment on the part of the government, the mine workers have guaranteed with their production the payment of taxes and royalties. Thus, the production of the miners of Huanuni has been during 2011: 9683 (TMF) with a total income of 193,2 millions dollars, royalties 7,2 millions dollars, profits 48,8 millions dollars, IUE 18,3 million dollars and taxing after profits 30,5 million dollars. In 2012: Huanuni produced 9175 TMF with 163,2 millions dollars of income, royalties 6 million dollars. That is, from 2006 to 2012, the mining Huanuni company has produced 57972 TMF valued in 877,9 millions of dollars giving as royalties 29,45 millions of dollars, revenue 155,4 millions of dollars. (Information taken from CEDIB, September 2013)
The problem is not the Mining Company is a supposed crisis; the problem is that Morales and the State’s parasites have made money during these years by the working of 4700 miners without investing any single cent.
When the bosses affirm us there is “crisis”, workers must respond: we want to know the accounting entries not only of one isolated company in “crisis” but the accounting of all the exploiter bosses, the real numbers of profits of the transnational of the whole Bolivian mining and so, we will see if really the Huanuni Company is in crisis or not.
Because if we see the numbers of the mineral exports of the entire Bolivian mining, what the transnationals are taking and what they really leave for the state as royalties and taxes, we will see that all the State companies like Colquiri, Vinto, Porco, are doing business despite the falling in the mineral prices. Let alone the thousands millions of dollars the imperialist transnationals and cooperative bosses are taking from the pillage of gas and minerals guaranteed by Evo Morales. There is more than enough money to invest in the mining company of Huanuni.
Only during the year 2011 and 2012, the exploitation of minerals on the part of the transnational companies have left as patent 3,35 millions of dollars, as taxing 272,09 millions of dollars and royalties164,74 millions of dollars. Only during 2011 3.448 million dollars entered the country from the total 8331,9  million dollars of exporting.
In the first months of 2013, 201,60 million dollars have entered for exportation of minerals, that is, 43% more than the same month in 2012 when the value was 141,53 million dollars. Despite the tin is still falling down, zinc recovered increasing from 58,80 to 72,89 million dollars, lead rises from  11,79 to 13,07 millions.

A handful of transnationals take the bulk of the juicy profits generated by the mining exploitation as a whole. For example, in the production of zinc (Bolivia is one of the main producers in Latin America) there are only two transnationals that control the 85% of the exploitation: San Cristóbal (Sumimoto from Japan) and Sinchi Wayra (Glencore from Switzerland). Only San Cristobal exported within 2010 and 2012 US$ 541 millions as net revenue to his central branch Sumitomo. The transnational Sinchi Wayra exported 433.614.049 of minerals for the amount of US$ 129.645.425
The exploitation of the second most important mineral, that is, silver, is controlled by 3 transnationals in a 74%:  Sinchi Wayra, San Cristóbal and Manquiri (Coeur d`Alene Mines, Corporation of EE.UU.)
Let alone the millions taken as profits by the transnationals like Jindal Steel that plunders the cerro Mutún (having 260 thousands of iron) or the income for plundering the hydrocarbons whose exports were 3.222 million dollars in June, 2013, his volume increases 23%.
The export of hydrocarbons represented the 55% of the total of exportation. (Minister  of Mining and Metallurgic, September 2013)
Huanuni cannot be in crisis let alone at the edge of a bankruptcy, since with the millions of dollars the imperialist transnationals steal us, we can keep our workplaces with 4700 mine workers as well as create new posts for the thousands of unemployed workers or enslaved miners in the boss cooperatives; we can earn equal wages for equal work.
What the government’s employees hide is that Morales has mortgaged all our resources in Wall Street and Morgan Bank by handing out the exploitation of the hydrocarbons and minerals as guarantee for the sale of State’s bonds for the amount of 1.000 million dollars! Thus, he needs to give a “profitable” company that is, with miners earning low wages, without bonds and more than the 70% of the miners inside the mines coughing the lungs suffering silicosis, dismissing miners and kicking out the miners older than 60 years old. That’s the plan of this hunger and anti-worker government to “save” Huanuni!
This government is so liar and lackey of the imperialist transnationals and Wall Street parasites that for keeping us submitted and out of the streets promised us “eliminate” the evil neoliberal decree 21060, the “nationalization” of the whole mining sector…however, it only prepares superior attacks against workers such as the one against the textile workers, health workers and militant students and the vanguard of it: the miners of Huanuni. Morales and all the governments of the native bourgeoisies in the continent are the guarantors of the imperialist pillage. For that, they attack workers and their gains as their partners in Argentina, the Kirchners, do against Las Heras workers or in the North of Africa the dogs of Bashar Al Assad do in Syria and before Khadafy did (he was executed by the Libyan militias).
Morales and his friends are all of them the new Al Assad in the whole continent.

The leaderships of the COB and the FSTM have left the miners from Huanuni
facing the attack of Morales isolated again

The servility of the union leaders from Huanuni has led the government-supporter leaders as Montes, camouflaged under a “Bases’ Committee”, to carry the miners to kneel before the government of Morales

The base miners of the assembly, very angry, wouldn’t stop whistling at the union leaders, who they accurately see as responsible for the attempt of the government to take the offensive on the workers’ conquests. And this is right, since during the last COB strike demanding for decent retirements the collaborationist leadership of the COB and the FSTMB gave away the struggle and the strike in a negotiation table with the government and its anti-worker ministers. And after this strike the COB and FSTMB bureaucracy has finished signing an agreement with the government for a miserable pension law that isn’t what the miners and workers came out to fight. The results of this open treason to the strike of the collaborationists is what allowed the Morales government to take the offensive against the workers’ conquests, deducting the teachers more than half of their salaries, firing factory workers; and centrally prepared the best conditions for Evo Morales to attack the Huanuni miners and their conquests.
That’s why it’s not surprising that, after the defeat they imposed to the miners and workers, the collaborationist bureaucrats of the COB participated in the “Anti-imperialist Summon” of Evo Morales and all the exploiters servants of Obama, held in August in Cochabamba. That’s the servility of the collaborationist leaders! They deserve the hatred and repudiation of the bases of the miners and the workers as a whole.
In the middle of this situation of isolation in which the Huanuni miners were left before the attack of the government, the policy of the union leadership, influenced by the POR, far from orienting in a revolutionary way, only served to humiliate even more the miners before the Morales government. The leadership that was voted by the miners in the union elections to face the pro-government list of Trujillo ended up subordinating to this collaborationist bureaucracy, their statuses and bureaucratic regime. It wasn’t enough for the leader of the SMTMH Ronald Colque to participate in the “Summit” of Morales and the servant bourgeoisies, but as a part of the same policy which goal was to demoralize the miners’ left-wing he has sent a shameful letter to Evo Morales –in the name of the Huanuni miners– in which they claim that the miners support the government’s fake “change process” for being a sub-product of the revolutionary combats of 2003-05, which for Ronald Colque was a “democratic revolution”. This leader does nothing but to carry all the way the policy and orientation given by the POR with its collaborationist program of Anti-imperialist Revolutionary Front. However, Morales wouldn’t even accept him in the negotiating reunions of the union with the government.
In response, in the general assembly appeared leaders who are openly with the government and intend –in order to save the company– to carry the miners to kneel again before the government. With this goal and with the endorsement of Ronald Colque, manipulating the base miners, they called to form a “Bases’ Commission” –in its majority, hand-picked in every section­– to meet with the government and its ministers.
This “Bases’ Commission” is nothing more than a camouflage of old collaborationist leaders who have betrayed the miners before and are posing as “base” for not occupying any position in the union or governing bodies. So much so that at the head of that Bases Commission is the known traitor Pedro Montes, the same that led the COB to the feet of Morales for years, transforming it in an appendix of the government.
The current situation in which the Huanuni miners are is the result of the disastrous policy carried by the leaders of the COB and the FSTMB that –as Trujillo, Miguel Pérez, etc.- are the same that for almost two years told us that Morales would give us the “nationalization”, that we had to produce and take care of our work sources… and in this way they separated us from the combats that the entire working class was giving against this hunger-generating government. In this way the factory workers, teachers, workers from El Alto, etc., were left alone when they fought against the “gasolinazo”. Then the eighth march of the TIPNIS came, and the revolutionary strike of the 09/21/2011 in which we, the miners, didn’t come out to fight. All these sectors were led to the defeat by the COB leaders. And, once they separated us from the rest of the workers, they took us to a fake strike which wasn’t at all ensured by the leaders, exposing us –totally unarmed–, before the brutal suppression launched in Caihuasi by this government, miserable and servant of Obama. Today the miners are suffering the consequences of this policy with 18 comrades still prosecuted and abandoned before the bosses’ justice.
Now they are leading the miners by this “Commission” to pact again with Morales in order to “save” the company. That’s a lie! What the base needs isn’t a new pact with the MAS, we have already been victims of these and we got nothing. Everything that the workers got was a sub-product of bloody battles against the governments. The worst defeat that this government and their servants of the union bureaucracy can inflict the miners and the workers is to make them believe that we can get nothing with the struggle, that fighting was worth nothing and all that is left is to kneel before the bosses and their governments. And this isn’t true. The responsible for the defeats we suffered are the collaborationist leaders that seize control of our struggle organizations, that demoralize us with their constant backstabbing.
For that reason, what the working class needs is to regain control over their union as a struggle organization imposing a real direct workers’ democracy. That is to say, with general assemblies where  the base can really decide by majority and minority; where the leaders obey the resolutions of that general assembly and they can be revocable at any moment that said assembly decide. A union with revocable and rotating leaders so that Morales and his ministers can no longer corrupt them. We have to fight to break the state control over our unions. There won’t be any real workers’ democracy until we don’t throw away all the bureaucratic statuses established by the bourgeois state and its regime and government. Down the compulsory union fee! That all the workers put their fee freely and voluntarily in every general assembly! Account Review Commission voted in base assembly! Out the hands of the State from our unions! We need a revolutionary and internationalist leadership of the unions, the COB and the FSTMB to break with this anti-workers government of Morales and to seriously fight for the defense of our conquests! For a Mines’ Committee with rotating leaders, as the Pulacayo Thesis say!

To fight and win we must unify the workers’ ranks:

For a COB congress to impose the break with the government of Morales and expel the entire collaborationist bureaucracy!

For a revolutionary and internationalst leadership of the workers’ organizations
To defend our conquers from the attack of the government
To fight for the Nationalization of all the mines and hydrocarbons,
without payment and under worker control of the entire branch.

No political pact with the government of Morales, servant of the Morgan Bank and Wall Street!

The Huanuni miners, with the blackmail of the “company crisis” and the falling prices of the minerals, are being driven once again to the feet of Evo Morales. The majority of the miners hate this government that gave them nothing and has only suppressed, assassinated and humiliated them as in the last strike. The criminal policy of the leaders is to leave the miners alone before the government’s attack. They have been fenced to impose them the surrender. But we the Trotskyists tell them the truth: there is no conquering that can stand up and not be attacked but the government if we don’t defend it with the struggle, fighting for everything. To defend our conquests we must put our foot in the chest of the government and the exploiters. It’s either them or us!
To prepare a real struggle we must get back at these collaborationist leaders. With these leaderships we can’t fight and less be victorious. Enough with dividing the workers’ ranks! Enough with leaders that support our executioners: the cooperativist bosses, the private ones and the boss that is Evo Morales and his ministers!
We must recover our political independence from the exploiters, and for that the COB as our instrument of revolutionary power of the workers and pour peasants as in the ’52 and the revolutionary journeys of 2003/2005! We have to throw away all the ministers and “worker” civil servants that subdued the COB to the bourgeoisie and its government!
As regards the government and its minister’s claim that the Mining Company of Huanuni is in crisis, the miners should respond with the Pulacayo Thesis: “… The big companies use a double accounting system. One is intended for the consumption of the workers and for when it comes to paying taxes to the state; the other is used to establish the rate of dividends. For that reason, the figures of the accounts books will not make us give up our legitimate aspirations.
The workers who have sacrificed their lives on the altar of the companies' prosperity have a right to demand that they are not denied the right to work, even in periods where this is not profitable for the capitalists.
The right to work is not a demand aimed against such and such a capitalist in particular, but against the system as a whole; that is why we cannot let ourselves be stopped by the lamenting of certain bankrupt small manufacturers. If the bosses find they cannot give their slaves one more piece of bread, if capitalism, in order to survive, must attack the wages and gains won, if the capitalists immediately reply to all demands with the threat of a lock-out, the workers no longer have any other option than to occupy the mines and to take in hand, on their own account, the management of production.
The occupation of the mines, in itself, goes beyond the framework of capitalism, since it poses the question of who is the true master of the mines: the capitalists or the workers (…) Strikes with mine occupations are becoming one of the central aims of the FSTMB…” (Thesis VII, Transitional demands)
Out the collaborationist leaders that support the agreements of “solutions to the crisis by factory”! Enough with dividing the workers’ ranks to negotiate mine by mine, factory by factory, isolated so that the workers put everything in exchange of nothing and the bourgeoisies keep their businesses!
When the bosses speak of a “crisis” it is because they want us the workers to become owners of the misery. To respond to this there is only one demand: Show us the information of the crisis in the entire production branch! We want the accounting books of the entire industry to control all the businesses that the government and the MNCs make. Down the bosses’ trade secret! This is the first step to conquer a true workers’ control of the production.
Under a real workers’ control of the entire production branch, the mining workers will be able to reveal the trade secrets of the capitalists, which they hide under the principle of free competition, but that really is the heart of all the conspiracy of the capitalists against the workers as a whole. And there can be no workers’ control of the entire production branch without the abolition of the trade secrets, which is the first step towards the effective control of the industry, and without expropriating and nationalizing of all banks without payment and under workers’ control.
We have to fight to impose together with the workers’ control: Sliding scale of working hours and wages! To conquer decent jobs and wages for all.
Out the state and the government ministers’ accounting inspections of the Huanuni Mining Company! Out the government ministers from the COMIBOL board! We must impose in Huanuni and in the COMIBOL a real Workers’ Board. For the re-foundation of the COMIBOL!
We the Trotskyists don’t hide from the miners that the struggle for a true worker control is tightly linked to the revolutionary fight for the power.
For that reason, we have to impose an emergency Miners’ Congress to definitely break with this exploiter Morales government and prepare and organize a large struggle and prepare the general strike, calling the factory workers, teachers and combative students to defend the Huanuni miners; to fight together for: Nationalization of the entire mining industry, without payment and under workers’ control of the whole production branch! Nationalization of the hydrocarbons, without payment and under workers’ control! There is the money to obtain all the demands of the workers: free and quality education and health, decent jobs and wages for all. Expropriation of the landowner oligarchy and the fascist Media Luna to give the land to the poor peasants, and through the nationalized and unique state banks guarantee cheap credits so that they can have tractors, seeds and fertilizers!
We have to break with the government of the MAS and return to the path of our revolutionary struggle for: Out gringos! Crush the MNCs to conquer decent salaries and jobs for all! The land for the poor peasants! Not 30% or 50%; nationalization without payment and under workers’ control of all the hydrocarbons and the entire mining industry! For the monopoly of foreign trade under the control of a Revolutionary Government of workers and peasants, a government of the COB, supported by the self-organization and arming of the masses!
Stop the lies and deceits! The COB bureaucracy with their false PT have only proven that this is at the service of supporting the suppressive and anti-workers government of Morales and the MAS, of conquering new congressmen in the 2014 elections and from the Congress guarantee the votes for the president if he doesn’t get more than 50% of the votes.
We have to prepare ourselves to fight as the Marikana miners against the company managers and the bureaucracy, with strike pickets and self-defense committees. We have to fight as in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria against the governments, hunger-generating and servants of imperialism.
We have to fight for the only way out for the exploited, which is a Revolutionary Government of workers and peasants, a government of the COB, supported by the self-organization and arming of the masses. What the workers need and deserve to be victorious is a revolutionary and internationalist leadership. We must re-found the Bolivian Trotskyism in the way to the struggle to set up again the workers’ world party: the Fourth International re-founded under the 1938 program.

Internationalist Trotskyist League of Bolivia