Traducción final y corrección: viernes 01 de agosto de 2008
Publicación Especial sobre Bolivia fecha Mayo 2008
After several months of a bourgeois break up “in the heights”, the transnationals’ “board of administrators” starts a new trap against the exploited masses to strangle for one and all the revolution that opened 2003-2005.
Down the trap of the referendum on recallable executive (president and governors) posts devised by the agreement between Evo Morales, and PODEMOS (far right party) and the fascist “prefects” (governors) of the Media Luna!
Morales bourgeois government and the fascist pack seek to impose a pact of the oppressors against the workers, the poor peasants and Bolivian national interests.
Before it is too late, against the referendum trap, the working class has to impose urgently the summoning to a
National, Aboriginal and Popular Assembly of rank and file workers, peasants and combative students’ delegates!
which build its militia in order to smash fascism, confront the unbearably high cost of living, conquer a decent salary, the land for the peasants and the gas for the Bolivians; and to re-take the path of the 2003-2005 revolution!
The referendum “to revoke mandates” (i.e. to decide whether to recall the executive posts, NT) emerged with the pact between Evo Morales government, on one side and PODEMOS party and the fascist Media Luna, on the other;
it is a trap against the working class and the poor peasants.
Bolivia has been several months with an important political crisis between the different bourgeois gangs – on one side Evo Morales government held by the French Totalfina and the coca growing bourgeoisie, and on the other side PODEMOS and the Media Luna-. The trasnationals’ “board of administrators” has set up a plan to put an end to the political crisis, at the same time subduing the proletariat and the masses either to one or other bourgeois gang in order to re-legitimate the government and the fascist “prefectos” (governors). This policy is aimed to impose a strong bourgeois pact able to set up a new regime of stable bourgeoisie domination that ends up once and for all the worker and peasant revolution open in 2003-2005 and which has been expropriated by the popular front.
Those pacts have been always used as a tool to make the exploited masses stray from the revolutionary path; they mean lower wages and high cost of living for the working class; for the poor peasants, not getting the land they long for; in short, those pacts have been always paid by the entire oppressed nation with the plundering of its sources by the greedy trasnationals.
So this is the trap of the anti-democratic referendum, a proposal presented by the opposition and approved by the government before an international press conference: only a new pact between Evo Morales government, and PODEMOS and the fascist Media Luna against the exploited masses. It is only another pact of a series they have devised, that allows once more the reactionaries raising their heads as it strengthens the same fascism that has massacred the exploited masses in Cochabamba, then in Santa Cruz, and now hits again in Sucre.
With this treacherous pact, the bourgeoisie has a win-win scenario. First of all, thanks to the collaborationist role of the proletarian leadership, they keep and deepen the subordination of the masses to different bourgeois alternatives, all of them antidemocratic and against the masses. So they prevent the masses to intervene independently, while they are enduring the worsening of the cost of living. And at the same time, by means of this pact, the popular front makes the masses believe that the fascists can be defeated by voting and not in the streets, which favours the strengthening of fascism. Secondly, the pact seeks to legitimate again both the government, and the Media Luna fascist establishment and its gangs of murderers of workers and peasants. It is a pact to strengthen all the bourgeois and pro-imperialist parties and to defeat the Bolivian proletarians so to bury the revolutionary fight they have displayed since 2003-2005.
Thirdly, it prepares the conditions for another power agreement between the MAS government and the fascists, through which they can negotiate the Media Luna autonomy, letting the latter change different secondary aspects of the Constitution designed by MAS (Morales’ Party) and the trasnationals. The Bonapartist referendum would then allow for all of them to impose a new regime of stable bourgeoisie domination with legitimated institutions; that would not leave the least trace of the Bolivian revolution.
As we have said, the bourgeoisie has everything to win in the referendum and the proletariat and the poor peasants have everything to lose, because this referendum will give nothing to the exploited masses, in the same way the Evo Morales government, nor the Constituent Assembly of the MAS-PODEMOS pact have given anything to them; and nor will do the new Evo Morales Constitution: the hydrocarbons are still in the trasnationals hands, the land in the big landowners’, the huge wealth in iron of El Mutún was also given to the trasnationals; there are no jobs, the state budget for health and education is miserable and the inflation goes on escalating, which makes the situation of the starving masses unbearable.
The referendum is a trap against the exploited! If the working class do not confront this trap with the setting up of their own independent organisations of direct democracy to break the relation with the popular front government; if they do not build, with the help of the miners’ dynamite, their workers and peasants militia, re-launching in the streets the workers and peasants alliance that emerged in 2003-2005 to smash fascism and retake the revolutionary path, the bourgeoisie will give a solution against the exploited masses and over their bones and empty bellies.
The referendum is a new trap against the working class and the exploited masses. This trap should be defeated in order to prevent that the bourgeoisie completes its expropriation of and strangles the revolution opened by the working class and the poor peasants under the war cry: “Out with the trasnationals!”; “Guns, shrapnel, Bolivia does not shut up!”; “Total nationalization of the hydrocarbons”; “the land to the peasants”, those demands are still alive and must be conquered by the exploited masses.
The transnationals’ “board of directors” conducts the referendum trap
Out with the referendum on recallable executive (president and governors) posts, a trap devised by Evo Morales, and PODEMOS and the fascist “prefects” (governors) of the Media Luna!
The current political situation in Bolivia is developing in the midst of and shaped by the current crisis of imperialist capitalist world economy that the bourgeoisie is already charging on the backs of the world’s exploited masses, as expressed globally by both food crisis and inflationary trend.
In the present situation, US imperialism has been overdue in rebuilding its weakened political “steering committee” (that is a legitimated government capable of taking in its hands the general administration of its world interests) to replace a Bush government in crisis by a steady and fresh imperialist command that may take crucial decisions such as massacring the Iraqi resistance. Or for the case, rebelling the fascist Media Luna in Bolivia after the popular front –acting as another of its agents- expropriated the revolution and controlled the working class and the masses.
In such a difficult international situation, the transnationals’ ”board of directors” cannot allow this “breach at the top” (among the different sectors of the bourgeoisie) in Bolivia to stay open for a long time since it would imply that “those in the bottom” may irrupt at any moment with their delayed demands pushing a revolutionary combat which may put in question the triumph attained by the entire bourgeoisie with the expropriation of the 2003-2005 revolution by Morales popular front government.
Those are the reasons leading US imperialism to prevent -for the moment- the inter-bourgeois civil war in Bolivia. Under the present situation, the inter-bourgeois civil war would jeopardize its position in its Latin American backyard where the fake “Bolivarian Revolution” controls the masses and guarantees its super profits and the oppression of the working class while in Cuba the process of capitalist restoration keeps advancing with which they would give an important defeat to the world proletariat.
Up to the moment that US imperialism is able to conquer a strong “steering committee” in the next presidential elections, it cannot risk staking everything it has, trying to resolve the Bolivian questions by means of a counterrevolutionary civil war, as that would mean among other things, to arm thousands of workers.
US imperialism is stuck with its troops in Iraq due to the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses; besides, it is hated by its own proletariat that is under a brutal attack against its conquests and living conditions. So, while this imperialism rebuilds its Steering Committee, French imperialism gives takes advantage of that and launches an offensive disputing US business in Latin-America, US “backyard”.
It is the murderous French imperialism, with its oil company Total, and the Castroite bureaucracy, Chavez and other “Bolivarian” bourgeoisies who bear down on the FARC and the Colombian resistance the policy of disarmament and surrender in order to make its pipelines pass through. When Chavez rescinded contracts with US oil companies Exxon Mobil and Conoco Phillips for the exploitation of heavy petroleum from Orinoco River sands, he transferred that right to the French Total. That company also controls Bolivian hydrocarbons through its front firm Brazilian Petrobras and associated with Spanish Repsol. There are the activities of the different imperialist powers, their business disputes what is destroying Bolivia and Latin America!
These international conditions have opened huge inter- bourgeois fissures in Bolivia, and at the same time they are pushing as well the different bourgeois fractions to pact new deals and agreements. Thus, the anti-democratic referendum to revoke mandates -which has only two possible options: “YES” or “No”-, will be the gauge used by the imperialist transnationals and their native partners to see which is the most convenient agent and the most useful government to defend the bourgeois interests and complete definitely the expropriation of the revolution. Because the transnationals have decided that it is necessary to impose definitively a stable regime of domination, so the referendum is also a tool to define the shape that regime is going to take.
Once again, the two different agents of the transnationals,-on one side the popular front that controls the masses supported by the collaborationist leadership of the workers’ and peasants’ organizations, and on the other one, the fascist agent that is in alert to smash the masses if necessary- pact again and plan a new strategy to define historically the strangulation of the revolution opened in 2003-2005.
In this coming period, in order to advance in smashing fascism and conquer bread, work, land and hydrocarbons, the proletariat will have to write in their warring flag: “Down with the trap of the referendum, a pact between Evo Morales and the fascist “prefects” supported by imperialism!”. So, the first task is to break the subordination to Morales’ popular front government imposed by the collaborationist leaders of the COB, COD and other workers’ organizations.
The collaborationist leaderships of the COB, COD and COR, FSTMB and Huanuni Union prevented a unified proletarian answer against the high cost of living and against the fascists of the Media Luna
Out the collaborationist Leaderships of the workers’ organizations!
The referendum trap created by the pact between MAS (Evo Morales’ party) and PODEMOS with the fascist “prefects “ of the Media Luna is a plan of the transnationals, which cannot allow that the break up in the Bolivian bourgeoisie which has already lasted months, goes longer ahead. They are conscious that through the breaches opened among them, the proletariat and the masses may irrupt in an independent intervention with their own demands, which are beyond bourgeois interests.
These conditions have been present during the last months. So, while the bourgeois gangs fight, the high cost of living and the inflation are a whip in the hands of the capitalists against the exploited masses. The prices of food staples are ever more skyrocketing every month out of control. People cannot make ends meet, thereby, the economy of worker and peasant households is in ruins.
Amid this situation, the collaborationist proletarian leaderships behave relentlessly by always keeping subordinated the working class’s interests to the bourgeoisie.
The wave of strikes and mobilizations against the cost of living that took place last April, the maximum expression of which was the Huanuni miners’ strike that paralyzed the company for more than 15 days, received beyond doubt a backstabbing by the COB, COD, COR leaderships, and also by those of the FSTMB and the Huanuni union.
During weeks, health and public workers were on strike and there were permanent mobilizations against the cost of living; but they were all divided and isolated by the collaborationist leaderships of the workers struggle organizations.
The collaborationist forces were focused on demoralizing and leading the miners’ vanguard of Huanuni to the impotence. In that strike, a voice of class collaborationism was heard: So, when the rank and file workers –who after 10 days of strike had realized the government was not willing to give them the wage increases demanded- began to propose the building of roadblocks and marching towards La Paz, the leaders answered the following: “If in the middle of the political crisis between the government and the Media Luna, the miners take the streets to block the roads and march, we will make the right wing stronger just in a moment when they want to destabilize the government, but the workers have to guarantee the national unity”.
With that argument, which unified the entire bureaucracy, they prevented the Huanuni miners and their heroic strike to be transformed into a rallying point of the struggle against the cost of living. A point that would have unified all the sectors under the same demand, breaking any subordination to Evo Morales popular front government, so the workers and peasants with their workers’ and peasants’ militia would have been able to march to overthrow and smash the fascists.
It is time to talk clearly before the working class and poor peasants. It is necessary to say the truth: It is not a government that represents the workers and the exploited masses’ interests, one such acts like Morales’ which says through its speakers inside the workers’ organizations, that to struggle for wages, jobs, land, is to play in the hands of “the game plan of the right wing”! It is a lie, because it is the landowners from Santa Cruz that sell the land produce at golden prices in the global market who are responsible for the high cost of living; because the exploiting bosses who pay starving salaries and enslave the working class belong in this right wing!
It is necessary to say the truth: the collaborationist leaderships, with that vile deceit, want to prevent the struggle against the cost of living and for a decent wage because such struggle will affect not only the fascist bosses’ interests, but also that fraction of the transnationals and the national bosses that support and are represented by Morales government. It is pretty evident in its actions that Morales government neither defends nor represents the workers’ and poor peasants’ interests; on the contrary, by defending the interests of the entire exploiting class, it also defends the bosses’ interests and fascist landowners.
An independent intervention of the exploited masses fighting for their interests, and irrupting through the breaches opened by the inter-bourgeois disputes that were shaking the country would have meant a radical change in the political situation.
But the collaborationist leaderships prevented the masses from taking this path, since they put an end to all the strikes without achieving any of the workers’ demand; moreover with their policy of “national unity” and “do not face the government because the right wing gets stronger”, they were shielding the bourgeoisie as a whole in a moment the latter is feuding for the distribution of the profits taken from the plundering of the national wealth and the overexploitation of the workers.
Thus was prevented the independent intervention of the working class in the political crisis. It was not for lack of working class’ predisposition to fight but for the action of the leaderships that collaborate with the bourgeoisie. The leaders of the COB, FSTMB and county and regional unions prevented a generalized answer on the part of the working class against the cost of living.
An independent intervention of the proletariat would have terrified the fascist gangs. The struggle against the cost of living could have unified the entire exploited masses not only in the Antiplano (Bolivian High Plateau, where La Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba, etc., are situated; the Media Luna is a far lower high valley), but also in the Media Luna, and would have stopped sectors of exploited masses from being left submitted to the fascist “prefects”.
But as ever, last April the collaborationist proletarian leaderships subdued the workers’ response to the bourgeoisie, allowing the latter to set up a plan to put an end to the political crisis via a recall referendum, on the base of deepening the cost of living and handing out to imperialism Bolivian hydrocarbons and natural wealth.
Thus, once again, the working class was left with their hands tied up, while fascism keeps raising its head and Morales government, far from defending the workers’ interests, defends and represents the interests of Totalfina and the national capitalist gangs in partnership with the transnationals to plunder the nation.
What reveals that the proletariat has to defeat the existing leadership in order to be independent from the bourgeoisie and not to postpone the conquest of their minimal demands is what occurred on May Day, the international Workers’ Day.
The COB collaborationist leadership that had just divided and contained the workers’ struggle, ended up in the government’s official public ceremony, with Montes giving his political support to bourgeois Morales government. From several years ago, Montes has been demanding Morales to fulfill “October agenda” and “workers’ demands”, although that government has always ignored them and has clearly showed once and again its unwillingness to carry them out.
Last May Day –when thousands of workers were marching all over the country- COB treacherous leadership prevented the transformation of those mobilizations into a generalized struggle to prepare an active boycott against the fascist referendum that would take place 4th of May in Santa Cruz. Far from that, that leadership supported Morales calling “social movements” not to march to Santa Cruz on 4th of May (as the government policy is not and has never been to defeat the fascist but to pact with them).
So, the leaderships of the COB and the workers’ organizations that practise the worst policy of class collaboration have handcuffed the workers vanguard to make them feel impotent to face not only the unbearable cost of living but also the fascists and their autonomy referenda. Down the collaborationist leaderships of the COB and all the workers’ and poor peasants’ organizations!
The popular front government does not want to fight fascism, but pact with it. Only the working class, by acting independently, breaking all subordination to Evo Morales Government and with its own fighting methods can make sure fascism is smashed!
The collaborationist leaders of the COB and its branch organizations have subordinated the proletariat to the bourgeoisie represented in Morales popular front Government so that workers may not intervene independently in the political crisis between the different bourgeois’ gangs that has gone on for three months. By means of the same old arguments used by the treacherous Stalinists to back the bourgeoisie and deceive the working class with the policy of the so called “democratic fronts” and submitting the proletariat at the foot of the “good bosses”, the collaborationist leaderships of the COB and its branches have displayed once again their entire traitor role.
Using old arguments as: “it is necessary not to face the government because the “right wing” gains strength” the class collaborationists have imbibed a false conscience among important proletarian sectors, leading them to tie their fate to Morales bourgeois government. The truth is that the more the proletariat is subordinated to the “democratic” government, the farther away they are of being able to smash fascism; thus the latter is even more strengthened as a permanent threat against the exploited masses. This experience has been proved in the last years of this workers and peasants’ revolution that has been first expropriated by Mesa and now by Morales.
Even though the popular front and fascism are two different agents of the transnationals –as the former is based on the deception against the masses and its control over them, while the latter is based on the force against the exploited masses and smashing its organizations- both are linked by their bourgeois class character. They are different alternatives of the same exploiters. Bolivian fascists are backed by the huge private property belonging to the “Rosca” and the landowners who organize, finance and even lead the fascist murderous gangs as the “Cruceñista Youth” or “Youths for democracy”; those are fascist armed gangs who are the private army of the Media Luna bourgeoisie. On the other hand, the popular front – backed by French Total oil company and the new bourgeoisie of coca growers and state contractors – as the defender and guarantor before this revolution of the great private property in the hands of the entire bourgeoisie, is naturally impeded to fight fascism in a determined way, since it cannot attack the private property which backs and gives life to the own popular front..
To crush fascism, it is necessary to expropriate the landowners, nationalize all the mines and hydrocarbons without payment and under workers’ control, overthrow the murderous caste of the army officers that give arms to the fascists, set up workers’ and peasants’ militias and soldiers’ committees, etc. Though, these tasks will never be accomplished by Morales government, because between the bourgeoisies, as between bullocks, there is no gore: only some bumps and then pacts and business as usual.
Thus, before fascist attacks against the masses, the permanent tendency of the popular front is to make political pacts where the masses put their bodies and the bourgeoisie make business and wealth.
Trotsky defined clearly the struggle for the proletariat against fascism when he said: In backward countries the way to oppose fascism is the revolutionary struggle for the national independence and for radical changes in the agrarian relationships. Without agrarian revolution there is neither national independence nor salvation against fascism. Anyone who blocks the path towards expropriating the private lands and national resources in favor of peasants and peoples is instigating fascism. Vague platitudes about friendship and democracy are not enough. It is necessary to state a clear position: either with the magnates of capital and the pseudo-democracy or with the genuine democracy of the workers, peasants and oppressed people. (“El fascismo y el mundo colonial”, agosto de 1938, our English translation).
The popular front is what blocks the path to the expropriation of the landowners and transnationals; it has devised once and again agreements and pacts with the Media Luna for more than a year: this is the reason why the fascist Media Luna takes every time more strength.
Thus, it was in the fake constituent Assembly where Morales Government allowed for the bourgeois parties revival after they had been buried in the barricades of October 2003 and May-June 2005. In 2007 the exploited masses staged an almost full insurrection in Cochabamba against fascist prefect (governor) Manfred (Torres Vila)- who, being terrified of the exploited masses revenge, first hid in the Media Luna and then left the country. The governor buildings were put fire while the workers and peasants set up their own organisations of direct democracy and confronted fascist gangs in the streets leaving casualties in the combats. But Morales Government took the peasants out from the streets while the workers’ collaborationist leaders were doing the same. He put back Manfred in place using his army and police to protect the fascist gangs of “white asses” and with the trick of preparing a referendum on recallable executive posts to “get rid of Manfred trough the vote” the power was given back to that fascist “prefect”. Morales has now re-taken his control over the masses so that they may not defeat Manfred (or anybody else, for the case) by a revolution. After some months, the fascist gangs have come back to Cochabamba streets to beat workers, peasants and the youth.
While Morales government once again entered into pacts with the ever stronger Media Luna, the workers, peasants and youth that had escaped the control of the popular front were violently repressed by Morales’ coward “popular army”. The same happened in July 2007, when the Huanuni miners blocked the routes for wage demands and the popular front launched a furious repression against them while devising a new pact with the Media Luna and protecting the fascist gangs.
The popular front fears the more the proletarian revolutionary actions – that put into question the entire bourgeois interests- than it does the fascist gangs that beat and kill not only workers and poor peasants but also MAS (Morales’ party) militants.
The fascist referendum of Santa Cruz of last 4th May was a new and convincing, concrete proof that Morales government cannot defeat the fascist danger. After declaring that referendum illegal, anti-constitutional, the government focused its actions in preventing the masses to defeat the referendum with their own actions in the streets: it called energetically for not to marching on Santa Cruz, and also called on “the social movements “not to fight back the “fascist provocations”. It also left the exploited people in Santa Cruz resisting heroically alone; thus the latter became impotent before the hordes of fascist terror that hit and murdered every isolated worker or peasant they came across.
If the proletarians tie their lives, wages, and the future of their children to the popular front, they will be paid with misery, hunger and repression. Because Morales popular front has come to expropriate the revolution, that is, to thwart its triumph; that’s why fascism raises its head to smash the masses if necessary. If the proletariat is kept subdued to the popular front, it will be cannon fodder for fascism. Only by walking the proletarian revolution’s way, it will be possible to smash fascism and conquer bread, jobs, land and the hydrocarbons!
To defeat fascism and conquer the demands of the exploited masses, the working class must break all subordination to Evo Morales government and call for a powerful National, Aboriginal and Popular Assembly of rank and file workers, poor peasants who want to expropriate landowners and combative students’ delegates .
The recall referendum is a blatant trap against the exploited. While all the demands raised in the revolution that opened in 2003-2005 have not been fulfilled, and our revolution has been expropriated by the fake “Bolivarian revolution”, the working class and exploited have actually obtained a brutal attack producing an unbearable cost of living as food prices keep escalating. At the same time, the Media Luna fascists are raising their heads- thanks to their long pacts with Evo Morales government; they are now attacking workers and peasants, threatening at every step to smash the exploited people. Bourgeois gangs are fighting for their business, while the exploited masses are not even able to eat and suffer those fascist attacks. This is the “democratic revolution” claimed by Morales government who pacts with the fascist “prefects” (governors) while workers and poor peasants are attacked and starved through inflation!
So the workers and peasants who opened the revolution in 2003-2005 have not conquered bread, jobs, decent wages, land, mines, or hydrocarbons. Popular front has only guaranteed demagogy with its “Juancito Pinto” bonus -which pretends that our kids can now “study the whole year” when this miserable bonus does not allow for them going to school even for a month-; or the miserable “Dignity Rent” for our old people -200 Bolivians (U$D 28.5) which cannot even afford them their medicines. Those pitiable handouts are mean crumbs that fall from the feast of the oil and gas transnationals’ super-profits, just when hydrocarbons have reached a record price in the global markets. Thus, while the government and “prefects” (governors) fight for their slice of business and then, pact to cheat and submit the masses, the conditions the proletariat and poor peasants are living in are ever worsening.
Stop! It is necessary to defeat the collaborationist policy of the leadership of the COB and the other workers’ organizations that submit the Bolivian proletariat to Evo Morales popular front government pacting with fascist Media Luna. Only by conquering the most absolute class independence, the proletariat will be able to lead in the streets the poor peasants being tricked and oppressed by MAS and re-establish the worker and peasant alliance that in 2003-2005 made Rosca run away. To smash fascism with the workers’ and peasants’ militia, it is necessary to break all subordination to Evo Morales, conquer struggle organizations of worker democracy, start a decisive fight against the cost of living and for the slide scale of wages and working hours, and march over Santa Cruz to smash fascism and expropriate the transnationals and the landowners, that is, re-take the proletarian revolution road!
As we said above, instead of a tool for “defeating oligarchy by vote”, the referendum is a trap with which the fascist governors’ lead will be re-legitimized in their districts in the same way as Morales government, so that everything continues as usual: the exploiters making business, and the exploited masses being starved. Workers democracy must be opposed to this trap, it is necessary to set up an organization which unifies the exploited who are the vast majority in the nation, which unifies the delayed demands of the working class and poor peasants and stands up workers and peasants’ militia to smash fascism. It has to be an organization of the likes of 1952 revolutionary COB, or 1971 Popular Assembly. So, it is necessary to conquer a powerful National Aboriginal & Popular Assembly with workers and peasants voted as delegates coming from all the mass struggle organizations, to confront this anti-democratic and Bonapartist referendum with the true democracy of the workers and poor peasants who are the vast national majority.
It is necessary to defeat the trap of the anti-democratic referendum in which the vote will only be either for “Yes” in favor of Morales government or for “No” against fascism…As if it would be possible to defeat fascism by voting! This referendum is to re-legitimate business among the bourgeois gangs so they may re-formulate constitutions and autonomies over the backs of the exploited masses, protecting the transnationals’ profits and the landowners grip on the best land. It has been devised for strengthening the bourgeois institutions and imposing a strong regime of exploitation.
In the mobilization that took place in Oruro against the fascist referendum of May 4, the miners of Huanuni voted to march on Santa Cruz to defeat the oligarchy. This resolution was boycotted by the union leaders of the FSTMB and CODwho gave no support to that decision. However, that resolution is a clear proof of the predisposition of the worker vanguard to face and overthrow fascism.
The miners of Huanuni have the authority to call for National Aboriginal Popular Assembly with a delegate each 100 workers, where the poor peasants who really want to defeat landowners may come, and the combative students may participate with their demands; thereby, in such assembly -that may well be set up in Huanuni- the workers’ and poor peasants’ militia can be organized that smash fascist Media Luna and impose a unified demand of the exploited:
Against the high cost of living, a sliding scale of wages and working hours to guarantee jobs for everybody! Out the transnationals! Complete nationalization without payment and under workers’ control of hydrocarbons, pipelines, gas and all the national mining!
For conquering cheap food: Landowners must be expropriated! Land for the poor peasants! To impose collective farms with solid state investment! Nationalization of the Banks! For a single State Bank so that it gives inexpensive credits for the broken petty peasants!
Nationalization of foreign trade! So that food passes directly from the producer to the consumer: Expropriation of big traders, supermarkets, and the chain of trade brokers and middlemen of the commercial bourgeoisie!
That institution would have the strength and authority to call on the rank and file soldiers in the army- who are the armed sons of the workers and poor peasants- to disobey their coward anti-worker officials that do not attack the fascist gangs, and to vote delegates to adhere to the National Aboriginal & Popular Assembly of the exploited masses. In that Assembly, the leaders of the worker organizations will have to subordinate themselves to the Assembly resolutions, in the first place the imposition of the most absolute class independence for the proletariat, an independence that the present leaderships have destroyed, putting the working class to the brink of an abyss.
By conquering this National Aboriginal & Popular Assembly of rank and file workers and poor peasants’ delegates with their militia, they will put in place the only democratic organization for the masses to struggle; it will be a powerful tool to confront the referendum trap of the pact between Morales and the fascist “prefects”. It will be also an alternative of power to advance in the imposition of the only truly democratic government, a worker and peasant government based in those organizations and in the generalized mass armament. That will be the only government able to break with imperialism and guarantee the agrarian revolution.
To impose the only perspective that defends till the end the proletarian and peasant interests, Bolivian rank and file workers have to impose the worker organizations’ breaking with the bourgeoisie and to conquer the most absolute class independence in order to face that trap of the recall referendum agreed on by Evo Morales government with PODEMOS and the fascist “prefects”, They have instead to convene a National Aboriginal & Popular Assembly
If the Bolivian proletarians confront the referendum trap by imposing their National Aboriginal Popular Assembly of rank and file workers and peasants’ delegates, they will abruptly change the political situation: the Bolivian proletariat would make again feel all its power as a revolutionary class, which would awake the enthusiasm of the continental working class vanguard by joining them in their combat: the US longshoremen who paralyzed the imperialist West Coast ports from which war stuff is sent to the occupant troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on May 1, 2008; SIDOR workers that in Venezuela confronted Chavez repression forcing his bourgeois government to announce the farcical “nationalization” of SIDOR –htough he has compensated the owner company Techint, paying it well above the market value of the shares- to prevent a generalized worker rebellion. On this way, the Bolivian working class would unite Peruvian workers and miners who have begun to struggle against the Fujimorist regime of the TLC. On this way, Bolivian proletariat will also show a different alternative of independent working class struggle to Argentine workers who are divided and submitted by their misleaders to either of the two bourgeois factions that are in dispute for the colossal agrarian rent.
In this way, Bolivian proletariat would join Chilean workers and students who are performing an enormous combat against Bachelet in a unified struggle. That would put them in the vanguard of the Latin American proletariat in the fight to prevent the Cuban restorationist bureaucracy from giving up the revolutionary conquests to imperialism as it is doing now. The Cuban bureaucracy is preparing to impose a huge defeat upon the world exploited. Bolivian workers would stand up together with their class brothers and sisters from Haiti to defeat the imperialist troops and the “Bolivarian” troops of Lula, Kichner, Morales and Bachelet that under the UN umbrella have repressed brutally the revolts for bread in the island. Moreover, they would unite ranks together with the Colombian mass resistance to whom Chavez, the “Bolivarians” and the Castroite bureaucracy are calling to surrender and disarm, leaving them at the mercy of Uribe and his troops -US servants -to be exterminated.
That is to say, Bolivian working class would head the struggle to confront the fake “Bolivarian revolution” that means only business for the native bourgeoisie and the trasnationals and hunger, repression and exploitation for the working class and poor peasants. What the continental exploited masses need is to defeat class collaboration, the “Bolivarian Revolution” and the Cuban restorationist bureaucracy in order to advance in confronting and defeating imperialism and its plans of exploitation and plundering of our nations. In this present situation, the Bolivian proletariat’s combat has a key role in conquering the Latin American revolutionary unity against imperialism and its servants, those native bourgeoisies, be them Bolivarian or not.
By confronting the referendum trap with a National Aboriginal Popular Assembly of rank and file workers’, peasants’ and students’ delegates with its militia to smash fascism it could be built a road for launching a continental call for a powerful All-Latin America workers’ meeting. It would be a powerful tool for breaking with the bourgeoisie, to guarantee a unified struggle of the exploited people against the “Bolivarian Revolution” that is guaranteeing the trasnationals’ super profits and the speed up of capitalist restoration process in Cuba. It would be overall a powerful tool to confront imperialism.
The crisis of proletarian revolutionary leadership, that is, the over abundance of treacherous leaderships, has put again the exploited on the brink of an abyss. The collaborationist leaderships that defend the fake “Bolivarian revolution” and “market socialism” have led the continental working class to the feet of bourgeois regimes and governments which pretending to be “anti neo-liberal” are as exploiting, anti-worker and repressor as the preceding “neo-liberals”. The trap imposed to the Bolivian workers by the treacherous leaderships is similar to that imposed to the Colombian mass resistance. Thus, while on one hand, Chavez, Morales, Castro and other “Bolivarians” deceit and demoralize them with their mermaid chants about “peace”, ”disarmament”, “negotiation”, and “democracy”, on the other hand Uribe slaughters them in Colombia; and in Bolivia, the strengthened fascist gangs prepare to slaughter the exploited people if necessary.
So, the most urgent task is to break with the bourgeoisie and get rid of the leaderships that subordinate the working class to the class enemy. Because the Bolivian proletariat can only defeat fascism marching along the proletarian revolution path, re-taking the 2003-2005 revolution and making it triumph; and the popular front government is a mortal enemy of this perspective. But to defeat the trap through which the revolution is tried to be definitely strangled, it is necessary to conquer a revolutionary leadership. There is an imperative to set up again Trotskyism in Bolivia. For that it is necessary to defeat the destroyers of the revolution, of the likes of Lora’s POR that has presented … Jaime Solares for Oruro COD leadership, pretending him to be… the “left wing”! Jaime Solares, who in order to give up the October 2003 revolution, blocked the way to a workers and peasants government, supporting Mesa as a substitute for Goni! Solares, that traitor of the workers and peasants’ revolution!
We. the revolutionaries of the LTI Internationalist Trotskyist League) integrating the FLT, are focused on this urgent task. Nevertheless, this is not a “national” task since the struggle to set up the Bolivian working class revolutionary leadership is closely linked to the fight for defeating the fake “Bolivarian revolution” throughout the continent. Therefore, the “Bolivarian revolution” followers and their forces- that include Stalinists, union bureaucrats, Castroites, Chavistas and fake Trotskyists- have centralized themselves to control the proletariat and submit it to the bourgeoisie. In this way, next July, the Brazilian PSTU fake Trotskyists who lead CONLUTAS together with the Venezuelan UNT will meet in the ELAC (Latin American and Caribbean Encounter of Worker Organizations) with the collaborationist COB bureaucracy who support Morales and have the Bolivian proletariat hand-tied to receive blows from its enemies.
That is why the combat for a new revolutionary, internationalist and Trotskyist party of the Bolivian proletariat is linked both to the fight for defeating the treacherous and reformist leaderships throughout the continent and to the fight for building an International Conference of the principled Trotskyists and the revolutionary workers organizations. An International Conference that can centralise those combats in the road to put again in place the world socialist revolutionary party on the base of the program of the 1938 IV International.