Socialism 2008 - Where Now For The Bolivian Revolution?

The penultimate of my reports from Socialism 2008. Yes I know the event was over a month ago but it’s taken me a while because of how busy I’ve been. The finally post will be a review of the new book from Chinaworker.org which is a collection of articles about various things there.

This session had about 35-40 people in attendance and was addressed by Tony Saunois for the CWI and Annoukai?? (I’m not entirely sure its’s spelt that way) from the Bolivia Solidarity Campaign.

Announkai spoke first and she began with some general points about Bolivia’s history. She noted that unlike Venezuela, Simon Bolivar is not regarded in such a good light because only 5% of the population were counted as citizens when he created the country. She also pointed out that Bolivia is about half the size it was when it was created due to British armed Chile taking over the wealthy costal area full of Copper mines.
She noted that the main development of the economy was based around silver mines – because they were used to work these means lead to the indigenous peoples surviving much better in Bolivia. The Spanish created their own capital, Sucre, near the copper mines and built there the first university in the Americas to educate the children of Spaniards.
Tin eventually became the staple of the economy and the capital moved again to La Paz.
She then talked about the 1952 revolution. She pointed out that this revolution gave the indigenous population political rights, led to the reorganisation of the army and created the COB with what Annoukai called a transitional programme. Also the banks and some of the main industries were nationalised.
It also brought the MNR to power, but this was a pro-capitalist government that benefited from the revolution – their leader was actually out of the country when the uprising took place.
The miners had always been the most organised section of the population, and it was this section of the population that had to be defeated to introduce neo-liberal policies.
Privatisation – called capitalisation – was sold as the basis of developing industry, but led to several struggles.
In 2000 there were the Water Wars, in 2003 there were the Gas Wars in Cochabamba and El Alto (a slum near the capital, La Paz) and these struggles led to Evo Morales being elected with 54% of the vote as the first indigenous president of Bolivia.
On a final note to her contribution, Annoukai said she thought that if it hadn’t been for the support of Venezuela, Cuba and the Argentinian left Bolivia would have been facing a civil war much sooner.

Tony began by reiterating the importance of 1952 in Bolivia and the Water & Gas Wars, posing them in both cases to be revolutionary movements that have led to reform. Prior to Morales election there was an element of Apartheid in Bolivia which still prevails to an extent in the Media Luna. However, unlike Venezuela a revolutionary tradition runs through Bolivia which is better organised, especially the miners and ex-miners.
Then Tony talked about the situation that developed in Bolivia earlier this year. He said that it almost reached the situation of a civil war, with a constitutional coup attempted in the Media Luna. However, a 100,000 mobilised to defend the electoral minority there and this movement checked the counter-revolution. He also pointed out that Morales got an even bigger majority in the recall referendum than when he was elected with 65%, and compared this to the figure Allende obtained which was 44-5% at best.
He said that Morales had taken some steps, but not gone far enough. At all stages he has tried to negotiate with the right rather than seriously mobilise the masses and in a similar way to how Chavez did has called for a more humane ‘Andean Capitalism’.
Tony also talked about the proposed new constitution for Bolivia which has revived the possibilities of carrying through the 1953 agricultural reform more fully and pointed to one of the reasons this being needed due to the extent that bonded labour still exists in the Media Luna. However, over 200 amendments have been made to the proposed constitution which will be put to the vote on January 25th and this has made the reforms vague and will disappoint people.
In his final points Tony noted how the revolutionary movement as developing over quite a long period of time, in Bolivia since 2000 and also that because Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America it would be hit hard during the economic crisis.

There were various contributions from the floor, but the most interesting (and only one I fully wrote down) was from a comrade who had visited Cochabamba recently saying that he felt that the masses are beginning to tire of Morales, and especially the fact that always tries to negotiate with the right wing.

Annoukai then came back pointing out that the unions are in effect the main social organisation in Bolivia with unions even for children who clean shoes. She pointed out some gains of the revolution being the increase in life expectancy and literacy. She also said that she thought that talking about ethnicity in Bolivia is quite devisive given that there are around 32 potential different nationalities in the country.
She also talked a little about Morales saying that he had forced two generations in the army to retire which she thought was a blow to the right and also that she saw the revolution in Bolivia as being more of a bottom up revolution compared to Venezuela’s top-down one. She also stated that Morales takes a living wage (does he?) and for some reason decided to compare him with George Galloway in this respect (who certainly doesn’t take a living wage to my knowledge).

Tony starting in his reply by saying that the neighbourhood committees in Bolivia are very important, potentially these could take over power. He said there was also a history of left centrism in the country, of not going over from words to deeds. He also noted that there is serious opposition to Morales on the left in Bolivia and that MAS is less bureaucratic than the PSUV, although it is also a much looser organisation too. He concluded by saying that it may not be towards Bolivia we will be looking over the next few years, due to the economic recession he thought that struggles in Mexico, Chile, Brazil and Argentina will come to the fore.

Rights and Their Necessary Material Conditions

This piece looks at a chapter by Hector Gros Espiell from the book The Poverty of Rights (eds. Van Genugten & Perez-Bustillo, 2001). This book was the only book in my university library which attempted to deal with human rights in Latin America.

The fundamental thesis of this piece is that human rights can only be secured when there is an economic basis sufficient to sustain them. The second point flowing from this is that although many countries proclaim support for the idea of human rights, this means nothing if the above condition is not met. The author of this piece cites a wealth of human rights legislation that shows the official support for political, legal, cultural and social rights, but he notes that the actual existence of these rights is patchy in many areas of the world.
The author’s belief of how to achieve this is that the necessary material conditions is through the development of the capitalist state, saying that “…we have to recognise that law, that is to say the law of a democratic state committed to social justice, is the necessary but perhaps insufficient condition to promote the economic and social change necessary for rights to be realised” (pg.139)
But is this self-same capitalist state, which is in existence to represent the interests of the capitalists profits rather than the needs of the working masses, that keeps the present disequilibrium in society that presents such needs from being realised. Of course, this comment is in all likelihood also directed towards indicting the bureaucratic, totalitarian, Stalinist states, and it is fair to say that the spread of workers democracy in those countries would have led to being able to put in place the guaranteed rights that human rights activists crave. But then this is basically the same programme that is needed in the rest of the world to give workers the ability to control their own societies and give the material basis for full universal rights for all.

Review – Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano (1970)

I started reading this book in preparation for an essay where I felt I needed to get a better understanding of the history of Latin America. And this is a brilliant book for doing that. The author demonstrates admirably how Latin America has been plundered by the more developed countries of Europe and the US, how these switched from the less developed Spain and Portugal to the more developed Britain and the US. He shows how growth and development in Latin America has been stifled by subordination to these countries, drawing on Marx and even more so on Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.

He also shows that there has been resistance and rebellion too. Documenting both nationalist struggles and peasant uprisings as well as commenting on the Cuban revolution and Allende’s Chile (although the latter on really in a postscript entitled 7 years after as the book was written in 1970). The tale of bonapartist Paraguay in the mid-19th century is also interesting, as the only country that began to develop without being sub-ordinated to foreign capital, which was quickly crushed by a triple alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – organised and financed by Britain whose dominance in the area it threatened.

There are on or two small negative points though. Firstly, there is not as much depth in the bits about the 20th century as there is on earlier centuries. Secondly, the author tends to ramble a bit, although everything he describes in a chapter is related you do tend to occasionally find yourself a bit lost in the book. But these are only small problems put against the great value that this book has.

Solidarity with the Gualberto Villarroel Contract workers union

Today, the leaders of the Sindicato Mixto de Trabajadores Petroleros Gualberto Villarroel, are beginning a hunger strike in La Paz in defence of their rights to organise and for a decent wage.
Their are roughly 300 contract workers at the Gualberto Villarroel oil refinery in Cochabamba, who have contracts for between 3 months and 2 years. With the contract workers being paid poverty wages of between 500-800 Bolivianos a month, permanent workers are paid much higher salaries ranging from 7,800-90,000 Bolivianos a month. To fight for higher wages, the contract workers formed their own trade union, the Sindicato Mixto de Trabajadores, but the leaders and most active members were fired, to date this is 32 members.
The sackings first started 8 months ago when the refinery was still owned by the Brazilian state-run transnational, Petrobras. When the refinery was nationalised on May 11th, workers expected a big change from the Evo Morales' MAS government, but nothing happened. The workers have been lobbying the governemnt but t no avail and are now going on the afoementioned hunger strike. They demand

• All fired union leaders and workers must be immediately rehired.
• The national labor laws prohibiting two-tiered working conditions must be respected.
• All temporary contract workers must be signed to permanent contracts.
• The right to unionize must be respected.

For details of how you can send solidarity messages and for more information check out the CWI article here:
http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2007/07/13bolivia.html