Interesting news taken from Znet.org….
Dual power has come to Bolivia most suddenly: not, as expected, in the form of a coordinated uprising of coca growers, highland Aymara peasants, and Quechua speaking peasants under the direction of Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People; instead, high school students and the working class of La Paz and its satellite city, El Alto, rose up spontaneously in the largest urban insurrection since the National Revolution of 1952.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, February 12, students from Ayacucho high school attacked the Presidential Palace in the Plaza de Murillo with stones, and after the Military Police shot and killed members of the police’s Special Group, crowds burned the headquarters of the major neoliberal political parties (MNR, MIR, ADN) as well as a privately-owned television station, the vice-president’s office, the Ministry of Labor, and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, the last of which was created under the first Sánchez de Lozada administration (1993-97). They looted supermarkets, stores, ATMs, the Central Bank, destroyed a café frequented by many of Bolivia’s notables, and burned a car that was carrying the son of the leader of MIR. In El Alto, rioters burned and looted the water company, the power company, Banco Sol, the customs office, and the mayor’s office, and on the morning of February 13, they took over the Coca Cola and Pepsi bottling plants.
The second Sánchez de Lozada administration, teetering on the brink, has responded once again with a display of violence, though it does not yet control the proletarian areas of La Paz and El Alto that voted for Evo Morales and MAS. Armed with clubs, residents there have organized neighborhood watch groups to guard against looting and have blocked off main roads as well as selected side arteries to keep the military out.
As in the National Revolution of 1952, the police are part of the popular revolt, though it is anyone’s guess as to how long the unity will last. What detonated the uprising-which has since spread to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and could easily reach Sucre-was the violence that the Military Police unleashed against the police’s Special Group, which had marched peacefully on the Presidential Palace to protest proposed tax measures that threaten to further reduce their meager $105/month salaries. By the end of the Wednesday, February 12, there were more than 100 injured, and the death toll was 18, with 13 in La Paz and 5 in El Alto, including a young girl. To put this figure in regional perspective, since Bolivia has just over 8 million inhabitants, a proportionate number of dead in Colombia would be roughly 95 and in Venezuela, 60. To situate it in national historical context, the most violent contemporary administration was that of former IBM executive Jorge Quiroga (2000-2001), which killed roughly forty people in less than a year. In six months the Sánchez de Lozada administration is already responsible for 44 civilian deaths.
Since the major TV stations ceased broadcasting at 7 PM, the first night of the uprising was not televised, but it was atmospheric: close to midnight, with a dense fog covering El Alto (the Aymara city of 500,000 above La Paz), people met in groups of several hundred to discuss strategy, decide on appropriate tactics, and come up with a division of labor as rumors of an imminent coup circulated. Human concentrations were strongest on the bridges in La Ceja and at the toll that separates El Alto from La Paz. Old women, children over 12, young couples–nearly everyone participated. The streets, empty of traffic and smoking from the bonfires that rebels had set, were full of broken glass and large metal objects like desks, road construction signs and iron rods. In the hillside neighborhoods of northwestern La Paz below El Alto, the scene was much the same, except that certain secondary routes were deliberately kept open to traffic and people concentrated in smaller groups, with larger groups battling the military behind barricades in the city center immediately below. In La Paz as well as El Alto, the army fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowds through the day and night.
Because it faced the military’s tanks, bullets and tear gas in the Plaza San Francisco, on Thursday, February 13, a march of more than 10,000 people was dispersed within hours. By early afternoon eight were dead and more than ten injured with bullet wounds from shots fired by army snipers posted on the rooftops of buildings and in the streets around the Presidential Palace. One of the dead was a nurse from the Red Cross who entered a building to help someone who had been shot.
The lower and middle ranks of the police who led yesterday’s revolt do not recognize the agreement signed by the government and the leadership of the police in the early morning of February 13, and have called for Sánchez de Lozada’s renunciation-a demand first voiced by Evo Morales in January. They did not participate in the repression of the march or the assault on El Alto’s barricades (though the Judicial Police rounded up looters).
Morales, absent from the march that he and MAS had called, plans to marshal his forces in Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People, and though Felipe Quispe is in Mexico, he returns on Friday, February 14. He and Morales have agreed that the highland Aymara will join the coca growers in a solidarity blockade. Though it is impossible to predict anything more specific than a broad spectrum of possibilities, unless the government manages to bring the lower ranks of the police into line, and quickly, the extension of dual power in time and space is one of the possibilities. More likely, the requisite co-ordination across regional, ethnic, and class barriers will not materialize in time to overthrow the government. Whatever the short-term outcome, however, the question of dual power has arisen again in Bolivia, and this time not only in the countryside. It will not likely disappear anytime soon.
Comments
One response to “Working Class Revolt in Bolivia”
At this time the count is 21 dead in the past two days and hundreds of wounded and arrested all over the country. All day, workers, campesinos, and youth mobilized in La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz. In Potosi, workers in the mine that is owned by the president blocked roads. So did the campesinos of Chapare, where according to the latest reports there were confrontations leading to another death and three wounded.
If yesterday we saw the collapse of the state with confrontations between police and the military and the mobilizations that arose in the afternoon, today in the streets there is a feeling very similar to the one that toppled De la Rua’s government in Argentina: !Que se vaya el gringo, carajo (gringo go home)!’ (the Bolivian President Sanchez de Lozado is famous for speaking with a strong North American accent) is Bolivia’s expression of ‘que se vayan todos!’ (everybody must go!) from our own country.
In every city, the organized mobilizations have been peaceful and disciplined. In La Paz, the organizers wanted only to march to the Plaza Murillo (the scene of yesterday’s bloody fighting, today under the custody of hundreds of soldiers and tanks).
It was only after the demonstration was near its end that the looting of buildings and banks, confrontations and arrests of demonstrators occurred. The situation was similar in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. These are the three most important cities in the country.
The feeling in the streets was one of rage. While a media campaign tried to generate fear of the phantasm of vandalism, the government decreed a national holiday and revoked the original economic measures (translator’s note-these were a tax increase and a cut in social service spending) that triggered the protest. Despite all this, thousands of people came out into the streets, and their demands are no longer partial-that the government step down and the parliament close were two of the most-heard slogans today.
Live Ammunition
From the beginning of the demonstrations the government’s behaviour has been a mystery. Yesterday the government said: “Mobilize if you want, but peacefully” and today the city awoke to find itself completely militarized. It was as if we were in the second round of a war that will not end when the day ends.
El Prado (the city’s main street), from which small groups tried to advance, was a scene of urban warfare-with snipers on ceilings aiming to shoot out legs of or to simply assassinate demonstrators. As a sign of what the government is prepared to do: a reporter was shot (and injured), as were two paramedics-one of whom was killed by a rifle shot in the chest when he tried to rescue a wounded demonstrator.
The other element of uncertainty is how the police will act. If it’s true that as of 5am the police’s leaders have come to an agreement with the government, there are still units in the interior that do not recognize the agreement and are in the riot.
A crowd surrounded the transit police station and linked arms in indignation. At first, the attitude of the police was not hostile: “Look, all we have is whistles” they said. But when the crowd threatened to advance, some of the police drew their weapons.
The problem of weapons seems a central one, discussed all day yesterday and today. The classic chant of “arms to the people, the people won’t be silent” and “the people armed will never be crushed” was repeated over and over. One woman explained that “we cannot confront the army with only stones.” Dynamite, traditionally used by the miners in protests, was also heard in force. Each time one was thrown towards the military or detonated in the street, everyone was dazed.
After noon a new element was introduced: the police slowly returned to ‘normalcy’, and in La Paz began to work with the very army it had confronted yesterday. The military left their snipers and guarded the public buildings and the Plaza Murillo while groups of police took to the streets, repressing looters and arresting youth. The same thing occurred in Santa Cruz, where attacks on the offices of the official political parties and public buildings as well as looting were the norm.
Some of the preferred targets of the demonstrators were the offices of the MNR and the MIR, the main parties in the governing coalition.
Throughout, the media alternatingly showed images of the looters and of Juan Pablo II asking for peace in Bolivia. The media also showed constant messages of concern and support of the government from Washington, the presidents of Mercosur, the churches, and the business confederations. One could feel the ghost of an Argentina II.
Bolivia and the Argentinazo
Yesterday, while we toured buildings that popular fury was destroying and burning, some students joked: “Let’s go to the Plaza de Mayo!” In Santa Cruz, today’s demonstration was called a ‘cacerolazo’ and all the international media recalled Argentina. The comparison with Argentina, the image of the president fleeing the country, was present over the past two days.
Still, to equate the two processes would be to oversimplify the situation.
The biggest difference is the division in the forces of repression, the fundamental pillars of this or any state. The police joining the riot, the battle in the Plaza Murillo, the dead and wounded on both sides, are a graphic representation of the collapse-not yet of a government, but of the state. The police, without meaning to, acted as the catalyst of the crisis, making it possible for the hardest-hit in society to go out into the streets.
Maybe the greatest similarity to the Argentinazo is the sentiment of ‘que se vayan todos’, expressed in today’s chants and, less massively yesterday afternoon. Still, the situation here is different: in today’s mobilization the unions joined in and, Evo Morales was applauded by the multitude.
Some parliamentarians were booed by cries of “Close the Parliament!”, but various political sectors capitalized on the popular sentiment and, within limits, still have the capacity to control and direct the mobilization.
The dynamics of the situation and the social sectors participating is also different from the Argentinazo. Yesterday, near the Plaza Murillo, one could see men in suits along with workers and youth. But at night, the generalized looting, the official campaign of the media, and the great number of killed and wounded had the opposite effect as all these elements had on the Argentinazo, working to separate the middle class from the workers and campesinos. Today’s mobilization was mostly workers, students, and campesinos.
Finally, in argentina De la Rua escaped with the support of no one but his own family. Today, Sanchez de Losada– despite having backed down– received the embrace of the US and various Latin American presidents who know that an electoral solution would probably catapult the MAS (Movimiento al Socialismo) to the presidency and open up an uncertain situation for their economic plans to continue looting the country’s natural resources.
Bolivia, my beloved
What we are living in Bolivia will surely take its place in history’s intricate labyrinth. The blood in the streets, the furious screams, and the regime’s fear, are images that will sear their way into our eyes as a giant step in the monumental work that none of our countries can escape.
The smell of gas, the destruction of the old system before a new one can be born, the calls to struggle on the streets and in the barricades, are the first steps of a people who have decided that destiny is something that can be changed.
Bolivia is a beautiful country, full of life. Today, when we saw the miners march without rest, together with young workers and students throwing dynamite and singing “!Que se vaya el asesino! (The murderer must go!)” we couldn’t but be affected. They were part of an incredible tradition of struggle with its origins in the gigantic mobilizations of the COB (Central Obrera Boliviana, Bolivian Worker’s Central) in the 1980s and the revolutionary struggles of 1952. It is these struggles to which the current government is both heir and traitor, while the protagonists of the future march together, writing their own history once again.
A history that is written in blood, as histories of the people always are. A history that we cannot merely sit and watch from the comfortable seat of the spectator