"We Won't Let Them Tear Bolivia Apart"

Yesterday morning at 10:00, the leaders of the Federation of Neighborhood Committees of El Alto, with their president Abel Mamani in front, walked the hundred meters that separate them from the Ceja zone and installed a blockade in front of the highway that leads to La Paz. The El Alto public school teachers followed them. At the same time, the march of the different groups of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), which arrived last night in El Alto, began the final section of their long march to government headquarters. A general civic strike, a march, and, at 1:30 pm sharp, a great open council in the Plaza de los Heroes in La Paz: the Bolivian social movements spent several hours deliberating what to do to reclaim the country’s hydrocarbons and other natural resources, taking them out of the hands of the Bolivian politicians and the multinational corporations. It was a fast, dramatic day... let’s look at the events, and what led up to them. A Week of Agitation

The last few days of last week were tense in La Paz, especially because the mineworkers kept besieging the city center. Mesa spoke little, allowing the media to discuss his “new” plans. The oil companies and the right wing remain at their posts: among the multinational corporations, the Brazilian company Petrobras has decided to accept the changes in the terms of its original contract. The right-wing Santa Cruz bourgeoisie has decided to begin its process towards autonomy without consulting the rest of the country.

Some announcements have begun to appear in the Bolivian commercial media… the classic government propaganda in this country: in a melodramatic tone, they ask the population not to fall into the trap of the “naughty ones” and to support democracy. One illustrating phrase, from a radio spot: “Let’s not let ourselves be influenced by leaders looking only for their own benefit… we are all Bolivia.” We don’t know if that was aimed at Jaime Solares, who accompanied a score of leaders from the Bolivian Workers’ Federation (COB) to try to enter the Congress on May 18, in order to impede the convocation of an automatic referendum on Santa Cruz’s autonomy before the Constituents’ assembly is held. This, kind readers, could be a good example of the present conflict in Bolivia: the right wing wants autonomy, while the social movements what to remake the country.

The highway blockades outside the city continue in a few points (some maintained by peasant farmers, others by miners). But the biggest demonstration before yesterday took place at noon on Friday, May 20, in Cochabamba. The social movements of that city marched a few kilometers to the Gualberto Villaroel refinery to organize a “symbolic occupation.” A crowd of 30,000 people arrived at the refinery at 12:30 pm. “It’s good, chief,” Oscar Olivera told us from the demonstration. “They have arrived on foot, in cars, in trucks… we are many.” Oscar finished speaking to us and then began his speech. Curiously, the media paid little or no attention to this event…

The leadership of the La Paz department remains on hunger strike (they have now entered their 16th day). Felipe Quispe and other peasant farmer leaders are doing the same in the legendary Mallku´s offices, in the Single Farmworkers’ Federation of Bolivia. And in El Alto, seven of the eleven members of the city council are also on hunger strike.

The Shut-Down Begins

Yesterday, at 10:00 am, the autumn sun was beginning to heat up the air. On 6 de Marzo Avenue, walking without any hurry, the first leaders of the Federation of Neighborhood Committees of El Alto (FEJUVE) carried the red banner that identified their organization, as they have many times before, to the area where the highway heads down into La Paz.

Two hundred riot police watched them install the first blockade, which the public school teachers, a group of high school students, some mineworkers, and unemployed workers soon joined. In the highway leading to the international airport, just a few blocks away, another group closed the road to cars and buses. And so began the first day of the El Alto general strike. The blockades continued appearing in the city throughout the day. According to sources consulted by Narco News, there are now various blockades installed in District 8 (in the south), District 6 (in the North). The Ballivian curve, in the center of the La Paz highway, was closed by local residents.

Around a half hour later the MAS march arrived. Many kilometers long and brightly colored, the march came down into La Paz to join the great council, organized by them, the Bolivian Workers’ Federation (COB), and a dozen other organizations. Coca grower and congressman Evo Morales, wearing a brown hat and wreath of flowers and coca leaves, walked in the first rank, accompanying some of his party’s most important leaders. They were more than ten thousand all together, without a doubt.

Division and Debate

A few blocks before the Ceja, the marched turned towards the old route that comes down from the highlands into the city, where the president lives. A contingent from the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) was waiting for them at that corner. But before they met, a large group of students and professors from the Public Autonomous University of El Alto (UPEA) stopped to receive the MAS... and began to taunt them: “Neither 30 percent nor 50; nationalization!” This slogan, referring to the MAS’s proposal on how to tax and collect royalties from the exploitation of hydrocarbons, was shouted at all the MAS-aligned farmers who have been marching for an entire week. The division over how to reclaim the natural gas and other hydrocarbons for the people was obvious… some of the MAS contingents responded with their own slogan (demanding the Congress convoke a constitutional assembly), though others accepted it as their own.

The debate remained open. Jaime Solares told us as much a few minutes later, in a brief conversation in the Ceja neighborhood, where Solares headed to greet the FEJUVE representatives. The COB president said the council was held in order for the movements to try to reach a single position. The problem is that the COB, the Aymara farmers and other groups have demonstrated in favor of total hydrocarbon nationalization, while the MAS maintains the possibility of negotiating, through legal means, higher profits for Bolivia without expelling the oil companies.

In any event, it remained clear that nobody wanted to break with his brothers. This was demonstrated later, during the council. For that reason, FEJUVE’s Abel Mamni, El Alto city councilor Roberto de la Cruz, and other El Alto leaders came close for a while to salute the march, though they didn’t accompany it; the people of El Alto are engaged in a shut-down and agreed not to abandon their blockade points. Mamani, anyway, left clear that the strike he is leading does not aim to overthrow the government, nor does it hope to provoke anything other than the recuperation of hydrocarbon property.

The Tense Council

And while the Alteños remained on guard, peasant farmers from the nine departments (provinces) of Bolivia came down to attend the council, where several labor unions (including the La Paz teachers) waited to debate. At 1:30 pm the arguments began. And of yesterday’s speeches, kind readers, we have saved for you that of Aymara leader Gualberto Choque, executive secretary of the Tupaj Katari Single Federation of Peasant Farmers of the Department of La Paz. Choque explained to his brothers, who had arrived from all parts of the country, that now is the time to throw out the “old shoe” that is the Bolivian State.

“We cannot allow the k’aras (the white men) to tear apart Bolivia,” explained Choque in his speech. He spoke in Spanish, rather than his native Aymara, “so that those who have sucked our blood for 500 years understand once and for all.” And on the Constituents’ Assembly, a demand the MAS has made in response to the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie’s threat to divide the country, Choque made it clear that the people would have to organize themselves, and forever forget the lies of the Bolivian politicians. “We are at war,” he concluded, “and in a war one does not fight or debate, but fight, as we are doing today, always fight.”

Alternate Senator Román Loayza, a MAS leader who controls a large part of the peasant-farmer sector, also spoke. His position was that a strategy for gas recuperation would be negotiated with all sectors, but that the people themselves had to decide what path to take. Loayza, at the end of the event, was charged with publicizing the main decision of the day’s council: the National Congress has four days to resolve all of this, or the people will do it themselves.

Of course, Evo Morales spoke as well, at the end of the event. Part of the crowd booed the MAS president, demanding nationalization. In his speech, which focused on the difference of opinion within the social movements, Morales spoke of not allowing the United States to continue pressuring and taking from Bolivia. Several times he repeated that he and other leaders of his party would do what the grass roots decide, what the people want. He defended the unity of the social movements despite all of their problems. Morales ended by announcing that the marchers would stay in the facilities of La Paz’s San Andrés University, and that they will not leave until they get what they came for, marching through La Paz to the center of power each day until they are heard.

It was Jaume Solares who closed the event, two hours later. Warning that no one can oppose the will of the people, he asked for understanding and attention from Evo Morales, but defended what he called the “revolutionary unity” of the social movements. Things were left at that, but the discussion in this tense council remains open. In the coming days, internal discussions will continue, to see if the movements can arrive at a single discourse, a unified political leadership, and if, finally, those that make up the majority in this country will be able to definitively take control of their lives.

And so the marches will continue today, and tomorrow, as will the El Alto shut-down. Meanwhile, the government has denounced a few “radical leaders,” claiming they are plotting with the military for a coup d’état, although for now nothing is clear on that front and Carlos Mesa, as usual, has not shown his face in the media. But things are heating up, kind readers, and although they sometimes stumble a little, the Bolivian social movements continue moving forward with strength… don’t miss what happens next.