http://germany.indymedia.org/2002/02/15469.html
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Von: libertäre Jugend, Bolivien06.02.2002 22:12
Aufstände in Bolivien
One death per week, one wounded per day, dozens of reports of tortures, dozens of persecuted unionists, a hundred political prisoners, the closing of radios stations related to social and union movements. In less than six months, that is the balance of the regime, more atrocious than it has been in Bolivia since the fall of the military dictatorships, 20 years ago.
The tone of these days is complemented by the media attacks which
criminalize all social protest, orchestrating the state's
imposition of an economic and political system of society.
Everything under the rule of capitalist imperialism, which exerts a
rapacious incursion of geopolitical domination, which clashes with
the mobilized wrath of the Bolivian proletariat.
The working-class, which has been on the ascent since 2000, is
progressively fortifying its unity and clarifying its objectives.
Although the ineffable bureaucracy has at no moment varied its
chauvinist and conciliatory positions, the push of the working
masses have forced union leaders to join the ever more radicalized
fight of the class which is freeing itself in Bolivia.
Facing the violence of the State/Capital, the proletariate is
defending itself. In the last month, three soldiers and a policeman
have been finished off in Chapare; while in Sucre a group of small
debtors, defending themselves from foreclosure, threw gasoline at a
squad of police and set them on fire. In the locality of Pocitos,
thousands of border workers made a group of elite police flee and
burned the border post with Argentina; on 2nd February last, a
march of thousands of workers, cocaine farmers, college students,
small debtors, teachers, health-workers, water-workers and workers
without retirement, ended up throwing stones, firecrackers and
paint at the police station in the city of Cochabamba, in protest
at the ferocious repression exerted by the elite forces - the
"dálmatas" - accused of torturing political prisoners with
electrical charges applied to the gums, finally a group of young
people dressed in black threw a homemade bomb, which injured five
policemen, including a senior officer.
Over the last 2 weeks, Cochabamba has become the epicentre of the
protests, with thousands taking to the streets, raising barricades,
making bonfires, setting vehicles on fire in some cases and
attacking shops selling luxury goods, as well as the court
building,laying barbed wire and glass to stop the passage of the
brutal body of police, that finally arrived, capturing even
children of 11 years of age and using heavy arms, a fact that was
cynically accepted by the government minister, who explained it by
saying that they had finished their supplies of gas.
The social movement in Cochabamba, which includes coca growers,
demands the abolition of parliament and the formation of a popular
assembly. The disturbances exploded after the expulsion of a member
of parliament, the farmer Evo Morales, who is the union leader of
the coca producers; the so-called cocaleros, who are spread over
the whole Chapare region and engage in the growing of coca leaf,
the buying and selling of which the government recently decreed
illegal in the zone, thereby condemning over 35,000 families to
hunger. All this under the orders of Washington and in the frame of
the phoney war on drugs.
Traditionally, coca has been used for over a thousand years, and at
present large sectors of indigenous and mestizo people use it
habitually as a part of their culture. That is why the movement of
coca growers has described the campaign as one of eradication and
commercialization of coca, like a cultural genocide, not only
humanitarian. So, the troops of the military and police have
assassinated, in this region alone, more than eighty coca growers,
shooting and torturing several hundred, besides pillaging and
burning whole towns.
The true intention of capitalist imperialism, the financier of this
campaign, is the control of the Amazon and Andes regions, and is
one part in the strategy of eliminating any social resistance in
the region.
The iron resistance of the cocaleros movement, is partly explained
by the flexible organization it practices, being based on
horizontal communitarian traditions of the ayllu and ayni, which
have a self-managing tradition.
A similar organization has also been developed by the natives of
the plateau, who this week have added to the mobilizations by
cutting the routes, together with farmers of other regions,
demanding among other things the expulsion of ENRON from the
country. Transport routes of almost all regions of Bolivia appear
to be blocked to different degrees. Nevertheless, the great
majority of routes are cleared until noon by soldiers, only to
become quickly re-obstructed. The significance of the interruption
is not in the permanence of the barricades, but in the distrust
that it generates for travelling by road.
Several peasant organizations and those of indigenous people have
warned that the battle for land will be more serious than for that
of coca, because it will favor the large landowners of the east as
a result of the reforms of the Political Constitution of the State.
The social movement in struggle involves many sectors - four days
ago even the police of Santa Cruz rebelled, demanding food vouchers
- and although it does not act in a very premeditatedly coordinated
manner, solidarity between the different sectors is a constant and
is bordering the government and the faith in bourgeois democracy.
The government of President Quiroga is a corpse that continues to
govern thanks to the support of the American embassy. Its existence
is paradoxical in a convulsed country with such a great tradition
for coups. It is an expression of the times that Latin America is
living under the capitalist imperialistic yoke. The presence of an
opposition rooted in the proletarian movement is imperative, one
which is directed towards burying not only the corpse of the
Quiroga government, but also the State/Capital. None of the leaders
of the different movements that are shaking the country are
directing their fight beyond the level of revenge, which eliminates
all historical perspective the fight which they face the workers to
subsist in a regime that does not have another alternative than to
unload the weight of its crisis on the backs of the workers.
Tricked by imperialist and bourgeois propaganda these leaders take
for granted the futility of socialism and just look after their own
privileges.
The bureaucracies must be overcome, otherwise we will become
victims of the capitalist crisis that lies on the horizon and whose
consequences we have already felt. Only a social revolution and the
construction of a new society can offer a future to the workers who
fight, not only to solve their immediate problems, but also to
construct their self-managed, horizontal, libertarian communist
future.
The social struggle that is developing in Bolivia, is part of the
same war of classes that the proletariat historically faces against
the capital state; for that reason, this must be recognized in the
fights that will free the [Image] Bolivi@n workers and promote
internacionalist actions worthy of the circumstances.
THE FIGHT AGAINST THE STATE/CAPITAL WILL BE COMMUNIST,
SELF-MANAGED, INTERNACIONALIST AND ANTI-AUTHORITARIAN OR IT WILL BE
NOTHING.
February 6th, 2002
Juventudes Libertarias, Bolivia
[Image] jjll_bolivia@nodo50.org
[Image] http://www.nodo50.org/jjll.bolivia/jjll/jjll.index
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