bolivia special supplement international workers’...

International Workers’ OrganizerBolivia Special Supplement

With Evo Morales government, his pacts with theMedia Luna fascists and his electoral swindle, wehave not got and will never get bread, land, jobs,

or the true nationalization of our natural resources.

IT IS NECESSARY FOR THEWORKING CLASS TO BREAK ANYSUBORDINATION TO THEGOVERNMENT OF EVO MORALESAND HIS ANTI-WORKER PACTWITH THE FASCISTS OF THEMEDIA LUNA!

WE NEED TO SET UP AGAIN THE ONLY TRUE REVOLUTIONARY ALLIANCE:

THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN THE WORKERS AND THE POORPEASANTS THAT WE HAD CONQUERED IN OCTOBER 2003AND MAY-JUNE 2005!TO CONQUER A DECENT LIVING WAGE, JOBS FOR EVERYBODY, LAND FOR THE POORPEASANTS, BETTER LIVING CONDITIONS FOR THE EXPLOITED MASSES, KEEP ALIVETHE WORKER GAINS AND SMASH THE MEDIA LUNA FASCISTS

Let’s set up anemergency congress ofrank and file delegatesof the COB and workers-peasants militias as in

1952!DOWN WITH THE CLASS COLLABORATIONISTBUREAUCRACY OF THE COB, ENEMY OF THE

PULACAYO THESES!

FOR A REVOLUTIONARY, INTERNATIONALISTLEADERSHIP FOR THE COB!

Supplement / Bolivia International Workers’ Organizer December 2009

Voice of the International Leninist Trotskyist Fraction• 2 •

This December the presidential and generalelections will be held. These elections are a true farce,a fraud against the working class and the exploited.These are the elections that have emerged from thepact between Evo Morales and its MAS Party –anagent of the oil transnationals, the French Total andSpanish Repsol- with the fascists of the Meda Luna–agents of the British Petroleum-BP- and the USExxon. For this reason, legitimated by Morales’bourgeois constitution, some candidates as ReyesVilla (who was kickedoff some time ago byhis own constituencyfor being a murdererand a corrupt official,TN) and even thesame LeopoldoFernandez, themurderer of workersand poor peasantsduring the fascistmutiny in Pando, areeligible and gou n p u n i s h e d ,p r e s e n t i n gthemselves ascandidates. This pact,which is a reflection of the worldwide US-Frenchimperialist agreement, supports the fascists and letsthem occupy the eastern provinces of Bolivia andsmash any resistance through the use of guns andbatons against the proletariat and the poor masses.Meanwhile the government of Evo Morales, supportedand covered by the class collaborationist policies ofthe leaderships of the COB and its affiliateorganizations, controls, demoralizes anddisorganizes the forces of the workers and the poorpeasants; anything that escapes their control has toface repression from this government and its

“Bolivarian” revolution, as was the case with theHuanuni miners, the industrial workers of La Paz,the retirees, the miners of Himalaya more recently;and as on September 2 the miners of Santa Mariaand former cooperativistas of Huanuni who werebrutally repressed together with their wives, childrenand elders, with water-cannons and tear gasseswhen they were demanding the promised jobs theyhave been waiting for in vain for months.

The bourgeoiselections ofDecember have theexclusive aim ofstrengthening thebourgeoisie as awhole and of re-legitimizing theinstitutions ofb o u r g e o i sdominance. Thefascists of the MediaLuna are newlylegitimized, beingallowed to disguise as“democrats” becausethey present theircandidates and so are

their fascist patrols that attack with fire and iron theproletarian and poor peasants, as is a daily picturein communities as Plan 3000 in Santa Cruz. On theother hand, the other agent of imperialism, thepopular front government of Evo Morales makes ashow to assure its masters that he can control themasses; he gives the masses the false andcatastrophic illusion that voting for Morales and theMAS, fascism can be defeated, or that land for thepeasants, hydrocarbons or good wages can beachieved. What a lie! With Evo Morales theBolivians have achieved neither the land for the

The Government of Evo Morales wants todemonstrate to the murderous army officers’ caste

and to imperialism that he is still needed toprevent the Proletarian Revolution



poor peasant because the landowner oligarchyremains untouched; nor the hydrocarbons whichremain in the hands of the same transnationals;not even a living wage which is each dayundermined by the growing cost of living; or jobs,as on the contrary, the layoffs are increasinglyextending to all corners of the country… Wehave not accomplished even one of the demandsfor which we have fought and died in the combatsof 2003 and 2005, thanks to this government!

On the contrary, the government of EvoMorales came to prevent the victory of theproletarian revolution that we began in 2003-2005 which had the proletariat as the headof the exploited of the nation; with it at theirhead, the masses struggled to impose theirdemands. He came to demobilize anddisorganize the working class, to divide thealliance between the workers and the poorpeasants, to reconstruct the bourgeoisinstitutions that the assault of the masseshad left in shatters; he came to preserve themurderous army officers’ caste coveringthem with an “indigenist” (native Indian)mantle, which favoured the fascists, lettingthem raise their heads in the Media Luna andremain as a potential threat held over theheads of the proletarians.

Backed by the international bourgeoisie andleaning on that fraud of the “Bolivarian revolution”,the government of Morales could seal once againpacts and agreements with the fascists (sparing itfrom being smashed by the revolutionary methodsof the proletariat); he played his role well of containingthe proletariat and subjecting them to the bourgeoisie,as all his Bolivarian associates Chavez, Lula, Correa,the Kirchners and the Castros could do all over LatinAmerica, all of them “Obama’s fans”, admirers of thenew US butcher in chief.

The class collaborationist government of EvoMorales wants to demonstrate to imperialism and thetransnationals that he is still a necessary agent toguarantee the property and the benefits of all thetransnationals, no matter what power they belong to,because he is the one who controls the workers andpoor peasant masses. He wants to demonstrate tothe officers’ caste of the Banzerist army, murderersof workers and poor peasants, that this is not amoment to unleash the fascist agent, but it is stillnecessary to continue allowing the popular frontgovernment to have the proletarians disorganized,

demoralized and defeated before the fascists cangive their decisive blow, because a new fascistuprising at this moment would be premature and riskopening the possibility of a new eruption of theworkers and the poor peasants, as shown during thefascist upheaval of September, 2008. This is whatEvo Morales wants to show in the elections ofDecember, and that’s why he strengthens his policyof co-opting the proletariat through the classcollaborationist leaderships of the COB AND its

organizations, which will present classcollaborationist candidates on the MAS slates, givingthe government “worker ministers”, a policy that hashad a bloody cost for the Bolivian proletariatthroughout its history, with defeats and bloodlettingas in the revolutions of 1952 and 1971.

This is the way the “democratic front” policy acts,with its “Bolivarian revolution”. Its pacts withimperialism; in other words: these are the ways ofthe “Obama-mania”: to demobilise the only really anti-imperialist forces, i.e., the fighting proletariat at thehead of the poor peasants, to repress the left wing ofthe working class and to let Obama come in forrecovering US “backyard”. Thus this “black-facedBush” has already launched a military coup inHonduras, imposed 7 military bases in Colombia andpromoted an offensive that intensifies the plunderingand the exploitation of our nations. On the other hand,French imperialism, although it maintains a transitorypact with the US highwaymen, does not want to losethe business deals conquered in the previous periodand for that reason it sells state-of-the art armamentsto Brazil –through its straw man, Lula- and backs



the Bolivarians in order to make its business prosperin the region. In Bolivia the main reserves of Lithiumin the planet have been detected in the Uyuni Saltmine, a mineral which means a very precious naturalresource for the new branches of capitalistproduction. As yesterday they did for the sake ofexploiting rubber, minerals and hydrocarbons, theimperialists will not have the least scruple inmassacring the proletariat in order to guarantee theplundering of the Lithium resources

In the heat of the imperialist economic world crisis,the hugecontradictions ofthis decaying andbankrupt system,can only sharpen.We have beforeus in our continenthistoric convulsivee v e n t s ,c o n f r o n t i n grevolution andcounterrevolution.The more thepopular front andthe farcical“ B o l i v a r i a nRevolution” controlthe proletariat, the more imperialism will have thebest conditions to smash the exploited.

For the moment, US imperialism has an interimpact with French imperialism; the latter places itselfin the role of a junior player; this is reflected all overLatin America in the proliferation ofcounterrevolutionary pacts between the “Bolivarians”and US imperialism, as that between Chavez andUribe that was imposed over the Colombianresistance; or that which today they try to impose inHonduras where Zelaya supports the coupists so thatthe masses cannot overthrow the pro-imperialistdictatorship with their revolutionary actions. This isthe real significance of the UNASUR meeting inArgentina, where the “combative” Bolivarians did notreject the US military bases in Colombia, so coveringObama’s SouthCom in the Continent. But this policyis being applied under continuous stress: the LatinAmerican proletariat has not been definitivelydefeated. The Peruvian workers and poor peasantshave still a lot to say, the same as the Chilean workersand students with their roadblock combats against“Bushelet”. In Honduras, in spite of the military coup,

the masses have not yet been defeated and go onresisting.

The international conditions only serve to sharpenthe conditions for decisive confrontations betweenrevolution and counterrevolution; Bolivia concentratesall these decisive issues of the international classstruggle. The proletariat still has a lot to say and do.The necessary task is that the working class defeatsits class collaborationist leaderships, breaks anysubordination to the bourgeoisie, centralises its rankssetting up a rank and file congress of the COB as

well as their ownorgans of classindependenceand mass politicals t r u g g l e ,smashes fascismwith the workersand peasantsmilitia andcommittees ofrank and filesoldiers andretakes the way of2003-2005, thistime advancingtowards avictorious socialist

revolution; it is a task of life and death not only for theBolivian proletariat but also for the Latin Americanworking class.

THE CLASS COLLABORATIONISLEADERSHIPS SUBMIT THEPROLETARIAT TO THE PACT BETWEENEVO MORALES AND THE FASCISTS OFTHE MEDIA LUNA AND PREPARE THECONDITIONS FOR THE DEFEAT!

DOWN WITH THE ALLIANCE OF THELEADERSHIP OF THE COB AND THEFSTMB WITH THE MAS!

In the Huanuni miners assembly on August 14,only combined forces of the leadership of the miners’union, supported by the speeches of the leaders ofthe Miners Federation and the COD of Oruro, headedby Solares, together with other leaders, could makethe miners vote for a political alliance with the MASand the government for the December elections; Theargument raised by the leaders was that with this

President Evo Morales with the leaders of the COB



alliance the miners could obtain hierarchical postsin the government from where they would be able topass laws in favour of the miners, obtain morebenefits for Huanuni, etc; the most “moderate”bureaucrats as Zubieta (former leader of the FSTMB)posited that the guarantee is that this is an “organic”alliance of the government with “all the miners as awhole”, so that those miner candidates from the unionthat enter the slates of the MAS “should be controlledby the rank and file assemblies and must giveaccount of their acts there”. This is a verydangerous farce staged by the Huanuni miners’union bureaucracy and the leadership of theFSTMB!

Any supposed “worker minister” that wanted torepresent the historic interests of the proletariat fromthe seats of the government should posit: Slidingscale of wages and working hours! Jobs for all, now!Decent wages! The Money to conquer thesedemands exists, the transnationals have it. Out withthe transnationals! Nationalization withoutcompensation and under workers control of thehydrocarbons, the mines and all the naturalresources! Land for the peasants, expropriation ofall the landowners! Any “worker minister” with aminimum of class consciousness should posit thesebasic questions that have their roots in the PulacayoTheses. But the government of Evo Morales is adeclared enemy of every single one of thesedemands of the revolutionary proletariat. It has shownits character by repressing each one of our strugglesfor even our most modest demands, murdering thesame Huanuni miners in Caihuasi in 2008 when theywhere fighting for a law to retire at an earlier age witha decent retirement pay; It shows it today repressingwith savage brutality the miners that go to the streetsto demand jobs as those of Himalaya and SantaMaria.

These class collaborationist leaders want to makeus believe that through laws of the bourgeoisparliament we will achieve graciously what we couldnot take from the claws of the bourgeoisie with roughclashes, confronting its murderous army with strikesand mobilizations, that is, with the methods of theworking class. The “worker minister” that dared toraise our demands in that den of bandits of thebourgeois parliament would be expelled from thegovernment, or even jailed as a terrorist.

It is crystal clear that this is a policy to submit theproletariat to the bourgeoisie, to the government ofEvo Morales. The Pulacayo Theses say: “The workerministers do not change the nature of the bourgeoisgovernments. While the state defends thecapitalist society, the “worker” ministers turn tobe vulgar pimps for the sake of the bourgeoisie.The worker that has the weakness of changinghis place of struggle in the revolutionary ranksfor a bourgeois ministerial portfolio goes to theranks of the traitors. (Our bolds). The bourgeoisieinvents the “worker” ministers in order to better andmore easily deceive the workers, to get that theexploited abandon their own methods to fight andsurrender themselves in body and soul to thepatronage of the “worker” minister.(…) The FSTMBwill never take part in bourgeois governments,because that would signify the most open andfrank betrayal to the exploiters and forgettingthat our line is the revolutionary line of the classstruggle. (Bolds in the original text).

It is Morales’ government which imposes thelayoffs, the wage cuts, or arbitrary wage rises todivide the workers, which imposes skyrocketinginflation and guarantees the continuity of theplundering by the transnationals. How would theworkers be able to fight for the wage and the jobs, ifwe subordinate ourselves to this government,renouncing our demands and our own methods tofight for conquering them?

Morales cannot concretize any of the demands ofthe masses because to accomplish them completelyit is necessary to attack the property and thedominance of imperialism. Evo cannot do this as theindigenous bourgeoisie that he represents, isentangled with the imperialists in thousands ofbusiness deals as a junior partner. Under the presentconditions, in order to oblige the capitalists to makereal concessions, it is necessary to break their will,which is not possible without a revolutionary, offensivefight like that of 2003 and 2005. The interests of theminers, the industrial workers, and the entire workingclass are conquered and defended only throughrevolutionary struggle, recouping our fightingorganizations as the COB and the FSTMB that nowlie at the feet of Morales, in order to retake the roadwe were walking in 2003-2005; the bureaucraticleaderships are enemies of this strategy.



THE CLASS COLLABORATIONISTBUREAUCRATS SHOUT: “WE HAVEACHIEVED NOTHING WITH THEPULACAYO THESES!”

WE, THE TROTSKYISTS OF THE LTIAFFIRM: WITH THE CONCILIATORLEADERSHIPS, DEMOLISHERS OF THECLASS INDEPENDENCE, WE WILL ONLYACHIEVE DEFEATS

Contrary to what the leaders affirmed through radiointerviews and on the miners’ TV channel in Huanuni(that the vote was unanimous), there was a majoritythat voted for the leaders’ motion, but there was alsoa sector that stayed firm on the defence of thePulacayo Theses to oppose this class collaborationistpolicy. “Some leaderswere against. But thispolitical alliance withthe MAS goes infavour of Huanuni’spopulation. There aresome “Trotskyists”that are against it.They say ALL ORNOTHING, and wehave always been leftwith NOTHING. Theyneither eat nor let useat.” That was whatone of the leaderssaid in the interview.

We Trotskyists ofthe LTI side with thatfraction of the mine workers that opposes thisnefarious policy of class collaboration and assertedin the assembly their position of defending the politicalindependence of the proletariat. Together with themwe affirm that thanks to the policy of Montes and Co.of giving a complete political support to the Moralesgovernment -as they have been doing time and again,putting the proletariat and its glorious fightingorganizations as the COB at the feet of Morales andhis anti-worker pacts with the fascist Media Luna-the Bolivian miners and the rest of the Bolivianworking class as a whole are much worse off thanbefore, with half of the country now in the hands ofthe fascist gangs of the Media Luna that massacredour brothers and sisters the poor peasants and still

terrorize the workers and poor peasants of thoseregions under their rule.

On the contrary, it was we the miners who foughtat the roadblockades of 2003 and 2005, in anindependent struggle, with our own methods offighting and organization, under a revolutionaryprogram alongside our brothers and sisters, workersand poor peasants of El Alto with the battlecry “Neither30 nor 50%: Nationalization!” against Evo Moraleswho raised the same banner as then president CarlosMesa, “50%” (of the hydrocarbons royalties for thegovernment, TN). WE were the ones who sufferedmore than 100 martyrs in the combats against thegovernments of the cruceña oligarchy, confrontingthe Banzerist army, murderer of the workers, andwe were the ones who made the governments of(former presidents) Goni and Mesa fall and made theentire international bourgeoisie shiver.

It is we the minerswho have fought andconquered thenationalization of theHuanuni Mineworks,against the leaderswho supported thatthe private companyremained. NeitherEvo, nor anyagreement with anygovernment whateverit could be, hasachieved these gains.We, the minersbegan in 2007 theblockades that closedall the highways to get

more jobs in the mine, confronting this repressivegovernment and its murderous army officers’ caste.We the rank and file miners were who defendedtogether with our companions (wives, sisters,mothers, daughters) of the Housewives’ Committeethe self defense of Mount Possokoni against thethousands of “cooperativistas” (self-employedminers) sent by the exploiter bosses, Moralesgovernment and his minister Villarroel to attack us,and we prevailed and conquered more than 4000 newjobs.

This is the way we conquered jobs for all inHuanuni! Fighting for the nationalization of theentire mining industry without compensation andunder workers control, for the nationalization of



the hydrocarbons and for all the demands of ourclass; putting into question “their” wholeproperty. And this is so because the social reformsand minimum demands we have conquered are onlythe by-products of our revolutionary struggle. Thebourgeoisie only feels obliged to cede something tothe workers when it risks losing everything. In thepresent conditions of acute world economic crisis,there are only two ways out: either them, attackingour wages, imposing on us more inflation,joblessness, robbing from us even our precarioushealth and educational services; or us, recouping ourfighting organizations from the hands of Montes andCo., for a political mass struggle , breaking withMorales, attacking the property and the business ofthe capitalists as a whole, fighting for our demandsin the streets, and for keeping what we have justgained… that is, retaking our road to revolution!

This class collaborationist government has givenus only bullets and squalor. The blood that was spiltby our brother miners in Cai-hua-si is still warm inthe memory of the rank and file miners… and thebureaucrats call us to support this government thatkilled them!

Today we have “nothing” because the alliancebetween the workers and the poor peasants hasbeen broken. It was a true revolutionary alliancesealed in the street combats against the bourgeoisexploiters. If anything, we have “nothing” todaybecause we did not seize the power in October2003 and then again in May-June 2005. And that isnot the responsibility of the miners, of the industrialworkers, of the workers of El Alto, because all of usdefended ferociously our working class organizationsand the political independence of the proletariat, asexpressed in the Pulacayo Theses. Thoseresponsible for the setback have name and surname:they are Solares, Quispe, Patana and the POR whorefused to comply with the resolutions of the COREl alto on June 8, 2005, resolutions that called to setup the National Popular and Aboriginal Assembly andits armed workers’ militia to conquer a worker andpeasant government. They are all the forcesinternationally centralized in the World Social Forum,the Castroites, the renegades to Trotskyismcentralized from Brazil, who prevented the victory ofthe Bolivian revolution and put a siege on it, submittingthe Latin American proletariat to their own nativebourgeoisies, country by country, with their “Bolivarianrevolution”. Thanks to this class collaborationistpolicy that they displayed on the continent, theleadership of the COB, then headed by Solares,

allowed the Morales government to hijack therevolution.

We have “nothing” because, after the nefariousrole that Solares played, the bourgeoisie took in handan even more class collaborationist leadership, thatof Montes, to submit openly the COB to the Moralesgovernment and his CO-NAL-CAM, becoming themain support of Evo. And now the incorporation ofour workers organizations into the apparatus of thestate is taking a new, higher step with the leadershipof Huanuni union sealing a political alliance with theMAS in the elections, which entails an alliance withthe bourgeoisie, that is, with our class enemy!

Very expensive it was for the working class andthe miners’ vanguard this policy of subordinating theproletariat to the bourgeoisie; we have to speak loudand clear and tell the working class THE TRUTH!With the worker ministers in the government ofPaz Estenssoro we did not achieve anything(save for the bombing of Catavi and Siglo XXmines with the miners still inside them and thissealed the fate of the ’52 revolution, TN); withthe subordination of the workers and the PopularAssembly of ’71 to Torres’ government whatcame was not the victory of revolution but thecounterrevolution of the Banzers and theBarrientos that drowned the working class in asea of blood.

LIKE THE MINERS OF HUANUNI AND THEINDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF LA PAZ didYESTERDAY, TODAY WE HAVE TO FIGHTFOR: OUT WITH ALL THE CLASSCOLLABORATIONIST LEADERS FROMTHE WORKERS ORGANIZATIONS!

As the Pulacayo Theses says, with a completevalidity for today’s events: “Every attempt tocollaborate with our executioners, every attempto concede to the class enemy in our struggle,amounts to selling off the workers to thebourgeoisie. Class collaboration meansrenouncing our objectives. All the worker’s gains,even the humblest of them, has been conqueredafter cruel struggles against the capitalist system(our bolds). We cannot even think of an agreementwith the exploiters and oppressors because theproblem of the transitory demands we subordinateto the proletarian revolution!”

In July 2008, after the repression in Cai-hua-si,the miners, unanimously, and to the cry of “Cowardly



traitors!” voted to kick off the entire leadership of theunion and also the leadership of Montes, Solares andMidma, and if that bureaucracy was not effectivelythrown down, it was only thanks to vile bureaucraticmanoeuvres, as that of convening a extended plenumin La Paz –as far from the miners as they could- tobe ratified by other bureaucrats, passing over thedecision of the rank and file miners. Today they canimpose this political class collaborationist agreementbecause before that the leadership of the COB, COD,COR, El Alto, had gathered their forces, with all theirstrength, to defuse the rebellion of the industrialworkers of La Paz, that had violently kicked off theircorrupt leaders, recouping their industrial workersFederation early in 2009; the treacherous leadershipsput all their efforts to prevent this little spark fromsetting on fire the entire working class, preventingthe setting up a truecongress of rankand file delegates ofthe COB that couldvote unanimously toexpel the classco l labora t ion is tleaders and retakethe course of 2003-2005. Thet r e a c h e r o u sl e a d e r s h i p ssucceeded inpreventing thispossibility throughthe naming of a newb u r e a u c r a t i cleadership for theindustrial workersthat now supports the “industrial worker” ministerChipana inside the Morales cabinet, and today theindustrial workers are paying for this “gift” withhundreds of layoffs in many factories throughout thecountry, while the “national” bosses make businessdeals with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie of Chavez,signing export agreements for the bosses of Boliviaand Venezuela to fill up their pockets at the expenseof our muscles and nerves.

The leadership of the teachers’ union in La Paz –within which is Vilma Plata, a well known leader ofthe POR - also played its role, dividing the workersranks, separating the combative teachers from theindustrial workers that were fighting for the samedemands at the same time, in a moment that thehatred against the stalinist leadership of the Teachers’

Confederation was mounting; on the other hand, theyalso kept the combative students of the UniversidadMayor de San Andres (UMSA) separated from therest of the fighters.

Enough is enough!! The workers of the CBN(Cer-ve-ce-ría Na-cio-nal Bo-li-via-na-BolivianNational Brewery) have resumed their fight for theregistration as permanent workers of all theoutsourced workers; this is the way we have to go:to fight again for our own class interests, our mostcherished demands.

The leadership of the FSTMB has alsoimplemented this class collaborationist policy toplace the miner proletarians as a whole and itsFederation at the feet of Morales and its government:it has put a motion to be voted in its national extendedplenum in Potosi for the same alliance with the

government for theDecember elections.This was achievedbecause they firstsucceeded individing the workersranks and theircombats, keeping onone side the superexploited miners ofthe cooperatives whowere laid off and lefthomeless in thestreets with theirfamilies becausetheir workplaceswere being closed.Meanwhile a fightbegan against the

bosses of the private mines which tried to imposelonger working hours, they were kept separated fromthe miners in Huanuni. Today, while the Federationputs this policy to vote, the miners of Himalaya arestarving with their families, fighting alone, while theformer cooperativistas of Huanuni have began to fightfor more jobs; they are repressed by the government,soaking them and their children in tear gas. Theseare the results of this class collaborationist policy ofthe Monteses, Midmas and Co. However and in spiteof the class collaborationist leaderships, there hasemerged a sector of two mines, among them theminers of Mount Bolivar that have opposed this policyand together with the vanguard miners of Huanuniare defending the validity of the Pulacayo theses.



As very correctly our Pulacayo Theses state: Outwith the worker ministers from the bourgeoisgovernment of the MAS! Merciless war againstcapitalism! Merciless war against reformism andclass collaborationism!

IT IS NECESSARY TO BREAK NOW WITHMORALES GOVERNMENT! EMERGENCYCONGRESS NOW OF THE COB, COD,COR AND ALL THE WORKERORGANIZATIONS WITH MANDATED RANKAND FILE DELEGATES!

The policy of the class collaborationist leadershipsof the proletariat, subordinating the working class tothe Morales government, tries to suppress the mostcherished demands of the exploited that reacted inthe face of miserable conditions of overexploitationand hunger. The Pulacayo Theses posit that thepolicy of popularfronts is meant tosuppress the classstruggle and this iswhat the leadershipof the COB intends.That’s why theseleaderships leaveisolated and dividethe struggles of theworkers from oneanother so that theydo not fight forwages, jobs, wageguaranty in case ofshort-time, decentr e t i r e m e n tpayments, againstthe mine-closing,for better working conditions, healthcare andeducation. However none of these demands can beattained if the proletariat continues subordinated tothe bourgeoisie, much less if the fascists are at largecontrolling through terror, half of the country.

Thus the bureaucracy leaves all the workerstruggles isolated as that of the miners of Potosiagainst the closing of the mines; the railroad workersfor the nationalization of that industry; the teachersand the educational and industrial workers for higherwages and against the layoffs all over the country.We have seen the overexploited miners in the privatesector -like today the miners of the Himalaya occupy

the ECOBOL (the site of the ministry ofcommunications) in La Paz together with theirfamilies, demanding their unpaid wages of 22 monthsand for their jobs, having to resist the attack of theMASist municipal officials.

To the policies of the class collaborationistleaderships who want to present workercandidates in the electoral slates of bourgeoisMAS, the proletariat and its vanguard mustcounterpose the convening of an emergencycongress of rank and file delegates of the COBvoted in assemblies all over the country. Fromthis congress, by defeating the class collaborationistleaderships, the unity of the workers ranks can beconquered, so that the proletariat will be able againto put its full weight as a class in the national politicallife.

To conquer bread, jobs, wages, education andhealth, land and hydrocarbons: Enough of

subordinating theworkers and theirf i g h t i n gorganizations to thebourgeoisie! It isimperative tobreak thesubordination ofthe COB to thegovernment ofEvo Morales andto smash thefascists of theMedia Luna! Outwith the workerministers from thegovernment of theMAS! We have todefeat in the

streets, with the revolutionary independentmobilization of the proletariat and the poor peasants,the anti worker pact between Evo Morales and thefascists of the Media Luna! Down with the anti-workers pact between Evo Morales and thefascists of the Media Luna!

To fight against the “sliding scale of jobsuspensions, wage cuts and layoffs” of the classcollaborationist leaderships, that EmergencyCongress must posit: For a sliding scale of wagesand working hours! For sharing all the working hourswithout wage reduction, so that all the workers canbe put to produce, for the registration as permanent



workers of all the outsourced and casual industrialworkers! For a generalized wage increase on thebasis of a basket of essential goods, with anindex linked to the inflation! For a truenationalization of the hydrocarbons underworkers control and without compensation!

For the nationalization of all the mines withoutcompensation, first of all Mount El Mutun, underworkers control! Any self employed miner that doesnot exploit another miner, goes to work on thenationalized mines as a waged worker with all thesame gains enjoyed by the waged miners!Occupation and workers control of any factory ormine that closes,fires or suspendspersonnel!

The poorpeasants, in spite ofhaving their “newconstitution” have tosuffer the “hiding” ofthe big rural propertyowners while theygo on living withoutland, credits ortractors. It isimperative that weworkers go back todemonstrate to ourbrothers andsisters, the poor peasants, that we are the class thatcan guarantee them their most cherished demands

We have to show them that we are ready to fightloyally and to the end for their demands, fighting forExpropriation without compensation of all theland that is in the hands of the landowners, togive land to the peasants as the government ofMorales -and its bourgeois constitutionarranged between him and the transnationals-did not and will not give them anything! To givethe peasants cheap credit: Expropriation withoutcompensation of all the banks, for a unitary statebank (centralizing all banks) under workerscontrol!

But none of these demands will be concretizedwhile the fascist threat goes on hanging unabatedover our heads. That emergency congress of rankand file delegates of the COB will have to set upimmediately armed workers and peasants militiasthat can terrorize the cowardly cruceña oligarchy, notfor the aims of the MAS, but to put on a war footing

the entire proletariat and the poor peasants, retakingthe road of 2003-2005, setting up again the COB ofthe ’52 together with its armed militias. Only throughthe setting up of armed workers and peasantsmilitias and organizing rank and file soldiers’committees in the barracks, the murderousBolivian army officers’ caste will be destroyedand the fascists of the Media Luna, commandedby US imperialism will be defeated! Thus we willre-open the way to fight for a Workers andpeasants’ government based on the selforganization and arming of the masses! Forimposing this course we have to retake and enforce

the resolutions ofthe generalassemblies of theHuanuni miners ofJuly, 2008, thatexpelled Montes,Solares and Midmato the cry of“Traitors!” Out withthe classcollaborationistleaderships fromthe COB and theFSTMB and allthe local unions!

To revenge themurder of all our

martyrs of October and to judge their murderers, let’sset up popular and workers’ tribunals!

The denouement (complete success) of the classstruggle in Bolivia is closely tied to the class struggleof the whole international proletariat. The Bolivianworking class, its vanguard, has to have it very clearthat the fight of the workers in Honduras against thecoup is a fight of all the Latin American proletariat,because the coup is a threat from imperialism onthe continent together with the imposition of the newmilitary bases in Colombia. The emergency congressof the COB should raise the fight for therevolutionary smashing of the dictatorship inHonduras! Hands off Honduras Obama and themurderous regime of the Republicrats, the UNO,the OAS and the rest of the institutions of thebloodthirsty imperialists! No pact with the coup-makers! Hands off Latin America, Obama and hisbutchers’ regime! Out of Colombia the militaryUS bases! Down with the UNASUR! Down withthe counterrevolutionary pacts of the“Bolivarian” bourgeoisies that submit the



proletarians to the massacres and offensives ofimperialism! Down with the capitalist restorationin Cuba! It is a question of life and death that theBolivian and Latin American proletarians breakwith the Bolivarian bourgeoisies and launch adetermined and synchronized fight against theimperialist offensive and its military bases in thecontinent. If the Latin American proletariat puts itselfat the head of this combat we will be preparing theconditions to defeat the fascists of the Media Luna.

FOR A NEW REVOLUTIONARY RE-GROUPMENT OF THE WORKERVANGUARD

FOR A REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP INTHE COB!

D e c i s i v edevelopments in theclass struggle are inthe works. TheBolivian proletariathas been paying ahigh price for thelack of anin te rna t i ona l i s tT r o t s k y i s tr e v o l u t i o n a r yleadership, while itis overwhelmed bya huge number ofreformist and class collaborationist leaderships thatare driving the working class towards a bigcatastrophe.

However, seeing this, sectors of the workersvanguard are resisting and readying their chests tofight the corrupt leaders. Thus a fraction of the rankand file miners in Huanuni rose against the resolutionof the union that gave its political support to the MASin the elections: also in the extended plenum of theminers in Potosi, the Bolivar mine and other sectorsrepudiated this policy of the Federation. Somesectors in the industrial workers are filled with hatredagainst the treason of their leaderships and arebeginning to organize to fight against the classcollaboration. Facing so many betrayals, theproletarian vanguard shaped and educated by thePulacayo Theses, is now drawing lessons and re-grouping to confront the betrayal. Those workers havebeen inside the living the flames of the revolutionary

combats of 2003-2005. The Trotskyists of the LTI-FL-TI are already joining ranks with them, drawingtogether the necessary lessons and organizing incommon to fight. It is a question of life and death forthe working class to set up immediately a newrevolutionary re-grouping of the workers vanguard thatconfronts the policy of the popular front, thebureaucracy of the COB and that concentrates therevolutionary lessons of the combats we have foughtin October 2003 and May-June 2005, and that fightsfor smashing the fascists with the armed workersand peasants militia, as the only way to conquer theimperative demands of the exploited.

This new revolutionary re-groupment of thevanguard must be an internationalist fraction of theBolivian proletariat forged with the lessons drawnfrom the betrayals of the reformist leaderships, ofthe defeats provoked by these leaderships, that as

the renegades ofTrotskyism, havecentralized theirforces at aninternational level tosupport the classco l labora t ion is tbureaucracy of theCOB and submitthe proletariat to EvoMorales. Thus theMorenoite LIT( I n t e r n a t i o n a lWorkers’ League)

gathered together in Brazil the EncuentroLatinoamericano y Caribeño detrabajadores (ELAC) (Latin American andCaribbean Workers’ Encounter) with the leadershipof the Ve-ne-zue-lan UNT that backs Chavez; theleadership of the Haitian Central trade union; leadersof the Oakland-USA, longshoremen; the leadershipof the Brazilian CON-LU-TAS and of some Peruvian,Colombian, Argentinean trade unions; and theleadership of the COB also attended. The aim of thatencounter was to organize and deepen the submittingof the proletarians to the Bolivarian bourgeoisies. Allthese forces have concentrated to defeat the Bolivianproletariat.

Only a new revolutionary re-groupment of thevanguard will be able to give the COB a revolutionaryleadership that the proletariat needs to put again inplace for their revolution which has been hijacked bythe bourgeoisie.



The renegades to Trotskyism have displayed andexposed their entire politics as a left wing of thebureaucracy, of vulgar reformists, impotent trade-unionists as the POR. The POR attended with itspublic leaders, the Huanuni miners’ assembly andshut their mouthes, remaining silent, leaving thebureaucracy a free hand to apply its classcollaborationist policy, which is ultimately identical tothat applied by the same POR in the ’52 revolutionand later on, throughout the Bolivian revolutionaryhistory. There are also the renegades to Trotskyismas the LOR-CI and the MST (former LIT) in La Pazwho are already positing their supposedly “anti-capitalist and socialist worker’s front” with the sameaim: submitting the working class to the comingelection arranged hand in hand with the bourgeoisie;in this case their policy is a copycat of that of theBrazilian PT, from which emerged that (preventive)popular front government of Lula’s. This policy differsin no way from that of Montes and Co.

The defence of the Pulacayo Theses has beenleft to the hands of the proletarian vanguard and thetrue principled Trotskyists. The class collaborationistbureaucracy and the renegades of Trotskyism of thelikes of the POR and the LOR-CI are the left leg ofthe popular front in Bolivia and all over Latin America,as is shown by their attitude in the face of theHonduran coup, subordinating the workers andpeasants’ resistance to the policy of Obama andZelaya, i.e., a counterrevolutionary pact with Micheletti(‘Busheletti’) and the “coup-makers”, that is, a policyof a “democratic front”.

Enough is enough! We call all the miners and therest of the workers that resist against the policy ofclass collaboration designed by the FSTMB, SMTMH,CODs and CORs’ leaderships headed by thebureaucracy of Montes and Co.; we call them toregroup our forces around the defence of thePulacayo Theses, the historic program of the Bolivian

proletariat, a program that is still up-to-date and validfor our times, and which is a true tool for fightingagainst this popular front government and against thethreat of the fascists of the Media Luna.

We Trotskyists of the LTI only ask to be in thefrontline combating against these classcollaborationist leaderships and fake Trotskyists ofthe likes of POR; we only ask to have the honour ofgiving the proletariat the revolutionary leadership thatit needs and deserves, something that was lackingin the struggles of 2003 and 2005. But we warn theproletariat that the much-needed leadership cannotbe a mere national leadership because we areconfronting the forces of the international bourgeoisieand their agents in the ranks of our fightingorganizations: the treacherous leaderships that arecentralized at an international level to help defeat themasses.

Our working class will be again be on their feetone and a thousand more times more; but therenegades of Trotskyism as the POR, will never morebe able to lift their heads! The revolutionary, Trotskyistand internationalist party that the Bolivian workingclass needs and deserves will be re founded on theruins of the renegades to Trotskyism, it will be builtup, fighting to set up again the world party of thesocialist revolution, which for us is the FourthInternational as it was founded in ’38 and whoseprogram and legacy have proved to pass the test ofthe world class struggle. In order to achieve thisessential task we internationalist Trotskyist have setup the Internationalist Leninist Trotskyist Fraction(FLTI) as a secure step towards re-establishing thegeneral staff of the world revolution.

LIGA TROTSKISTA INTERNACIONALISTA DE BOLIVIA

(BOLIVIAN INTERNATIONALIST TROTSKYIST LEAGUE),INTEGRATED INTO THE FLTI (INTERNATIONALIST LENINIST

TROTSKYIST FRACTION)

bolivia special supplement international workers’...

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