Bolivia: Leninist Trotskyist statement on the fight for Huanuni

The revolutionary internationalist workers stand beside the heroic wage-earning miners of Huanuni!

The heroic resistance of the Huanuni miners made the counterrevolutionary forces of the cooperativistas, Villarroel and Morales' government retreat

After two days of hard fighting to resist the attack of the counterrevolutionary forces of the small cooperativista bosses supported and armed by Walter Villarroel – then mining Minister in Morales` government and a cooperativista boss himself –the heroic Huanuni miners stopped their attackers taking of the mine.
500 wage-earning miners and their wives, sisters and daughters of the Housewives Committee confronted 2000 cooperativistas and defended their mine, their houses, their town, their families and their historical gains. They had to pay the price of several comrades fallen in the struggle.

Thus while bargaining with the fascist Media Luna bourgeoisie and the transnationals in the fake Constituent Assembly, Morales intended to secure the huge tin reserves of the Huanuni mine, especially Posokoni Hill’s 948,000 tons valued in 4000 million dollars, for the profit-hungry “cooperativista” national bourgeoisie, driven by a world tin price which has risen from U$S 4890 per metric ton in 2003 to….. U$S 7385 in 2006!

The attack of the cooperativistas bosses was the Morales' government reply to the successful struggle of Huanuni miners who, with campesinos, unemployed and a sector of the workers exploited by the cooperativista bosses, had just forced the government to let the state mining company Comibol (Corporacion Minera Boliviana, or Bolivian Mining Corporation) work the mine in Posokoni Hill and to create 1500 new jobs in Huanuni.
Following this agreement, thousands of unemployed miners and many of those enslaved by the cooperativista bosses, started to arrive from all over the country at Huanuni in the hope of getting their jobs back in the state mines, and to win back their rights, their old living standards and their dignity.

The popular front government of Morales, servant of the transnationals, would not allow the agreement with the Huanuni miners to be honored. That is why it encouraged and organized the cooperativista bosses to attack the Huanuni workers and retake the mine.


But Morales’ plan failed because of the heroic resistance of the miners and their workers self-defence organisation. On the evening of 6 October, a provisional truce was signed between the wage-earning miners and the cooperativista bosses, and negotiations were opened.

During the next weekend, the wage-earning miners and Huanuni townspeople held a wake for the dead and then buried their five comrades who fell in combat, along with the three Huanuni townspeople killed by dynamite thrown by cooperativista bosses.

After the Huanuni battle, both Evo Morales and the bourgeois tried cynically to present themselves as the “peacemakers”.

But it is they, together with the imperialist transnationals, who steal the wealth of Bolivia and drive the masses into misery. And it is they who sent the fascist gangs, the army, the cooperativista bosses thugs to kill the workers.

Reaching the height of cynicism, Evo Morales asked the people to be “understanding” with him about the “mistakes” that he made due to his “inexperience” as he “had never governed” and that was “learning”. “Learning”….. yes! “learning” how to kill workers, as bosses do, and every bourgeois government serving the interests of the transnationals and imperialism like the one he is heading!
There is no doubt that Morales has proved to be a very apt “student”. In just a few months, he has murdered in Oruro a worker from the Movimiento Sin Techo (Movement of the Homeless); in the Chapare, two coca peasants, and now the Huanuni wage-earning miners.

After sending the cooperativistas to massacre the miners, Morales “denounced” it all as a “conspiracy” against his government and raised the alarm of a ‘coup’ being prepared by a “united front of destabilizers” including police, army officers, the separatist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna and… the school teachers with the wage-earning miners and their unions, the COB, the COR of El Alto, etc.!

Bastards! The only “conspiracy” here is that between Morales' government with Villarroel and the cooperativista bosses to massacre Huanuni miners and steal their mines! It is the transnationals and the national bourgeoisie together who conspire against the exploited masses of Bolivia to steal its hydrocarbons and its minerals! It is Morales' class collaborationist government and MAS members in the parliament together with the fascist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna, who conspire against the people and the worker and peasant revolution in that fake Constituent Assembly!

It was Evo Morales with MAS and the collaborationist leaderships of the worker and peasant organizations who in October 2003, conspired behind the rebellious masses’ backs, expropriated their victory in overthrowing Goni and handed power over to Mesa! And they conspired again in June 2005, when the masses in struggle had overthrown Mesa: they delivered the power to Rodriguez overnight, within a session of an unlawful parliament brought together in Sucre and surrounded by the hatred of those masses!

Morales' government –as every class collaborationist government led by the national bourgeoisie associated with the transnationals and the international financial capital –has not even thought about confronting the bourgeoisies from Santa Cruz/ Media Luna, which are openly secessionist and are barefacedly arming fascist brigades in order to smash the workers and peasants.

Before taking charge, Morales went to Santa Cruz to ask the oil and landowner oligarchy to “teach him how to govern” because he was going to take care of controlling the rebel worker and peasant masses. He has learnt perfectly from his teachers, to kill workers and poor peasants. This is the government that makes pacts with the secessionist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna in the Constituent Assembly, while sending the counterrevolutionary forces to massacre the miners.
This is the infamous role of the popular front, of the old Stalinist policy of class collaboration with which hundreds of revolutions and the world proletariat have been strangled for decades; a policy supported today by that den of counterrevolutionary bandits of the World Social Forum.

Down with the pact between the anti-worker and repressive government of Morales and the native slave-owner bourgeoisie, the Cruceña oligarchy!
Enough of making the proletariat and its struggle organizations kneel at the feet of the bourgeoisie!
Let’s regroup forces now around Huanuni heroic miners resistance!
The Bolivian working class needs a program and a strategy to win and renew the revolution that, from October 2003, has been snatched by the World Social Forum!

The COB and FSTMB leaders call for the “militarization” of Huanuni to subordinate the workers to the supposedly “patriotic” soldiers and give away the tin business to them.


Spilling their blood in their struggle, the heroic Huanuni miners spoiled the counterrevolutionary plan of the popular front. They prevented the mine from being stolen and re-opened the prospects for the worker and peasant revolution, now stolen, to rise up again. They could have re-conquered –this time in Huanuni- the “headquarters of the revolution”, raising its key demands.

Nationalization without compensation and under workers’ control of all the mines and the hydrocarbons!
Out with the transnationals, expropriation of the landowners!
Land for the peasants, bread and good jobs for all the workers!, etc.

But this prospect has been barred time and again until now by the collaborationist leaders of the worker organizations (mainly the COB and the FSTMB) that support Morales' bourgeois government

Facing this counterrevolutionary attack of the cooperativistas against the Huanuni wage-earning miners, these leaders called for “pacification” and asked their “friend” Morales to send the armed forces to Huanuni to “defend” the mine, as the COMIBOL is state property. Moreover, these leaders use the possibility of a new attack by the cooperativistas, as a gun pointing at the miners’ heads to scare them and their families so as to force them to accept the policy of leaving their fate in the hands of the “nationalist” sector of the murderous military.

Montes and the COB leadership are asking “their” government, “their” friend Morales to send the supposedly “nationalist” officers that support him, to impose order because of the danger that the workers in Huanuni fighting back could mean the regrouping of the whole Bolivian proletariat.

The policy of COB and FSTMB leadership is only one more step in their treacherous class collaborationist politics of keeping the workers subordinated to the bourgeoisie, their ranks divided, and the worker and peasant revolution strangled.

These same leaders – the COB bureaucracy in first place – have abandoned thousands of unemployed to their fate, without organizing them, so allowing them to be enslaved and super-exploited by the cooperativista bosses and today used as anti-union armed thugs against the Huanuni wage-labour miners. The COB bureaucracy – formerly Solares, now Montes- have devoted themselves to dissolve the embryonic dual power organisations that the masses had built. Moreover, they handed over power twice to the bourgeoisie, first to Mesa, then to Rodríguez, and on top of that they called for workers to support their “friend” Morales.

Today when demanding the “militarization” of Huanuni, Montes and the Miners Union leadership are only repeating the old treacherous Lechinite [from the MNR union bureaucrat, Lechin, who sold-out the 1952 Bolivian revolution] policy of the COB bureaucracy of looking for “patriotic”, “anti-imperialist”, “red” soldiers to subordinate the proletariat to those “saviors”.
In that way the bureaucrats manage to deepen the division in the proletarian ranks, keeping them subdued to the popular front and so preventing the workers and peasant alliance being reforged again. As a reward for this “service”, they lure the sector of the Armed Forces that supposedly supports the national bourgueoisie –offering it the lucrative tin business.

This policy of finding “patriotic officers” had been already raised by Solares during May-June 2005. Then he went to knock on the doors of the barracks looking for allies to sell out the masses’ revolutionary days of struggle which were aimed at completely disorganising the bourgeois power institutions.
It is the same policy of Juan Lechin Oquendo then leader of the COB, who along with the Stalinists and Lora`s POR, which betrayed the 1971 revolution. Then they hand the revolution to General Torres –who even talked about “socialism –and joined his “Revolutionary Anti-imperialist Front” while Banzer`s bloody dictatorship was massacring the workers and poor peasants.

The imposition of this ‘patriotic’ class collaborationist policy of the bureaucratic leadership, meant the miners victory won through their joint struggle with the poor peasants and the unemployed, winning 1500 jobs under COMIBOL collective contract conditions was lost.

This class collaboration policy deepens the divisions in the workers’ ranks because it separates the Huanuni wage-earning miners –supposedly “guarded” by the armed forces –from the thousands of cooperativista poor miners. It leaves these super exploited workers at the mercy of the cooperativista bosses to enslave them and use them as armed gangs against the working class.
This policy also separates the Huanuni miners from the poor peasants, because the miners are prevented from joining forces with the campesinos who had their martyrs killed Armed Forces in 2003, and today suffer the repression of the “anti-drug” army brigades in El Chapare or Las Yungas!

The COB called a “national strike” for October 10, precisely with this program of demanding Huanuni`s militarization. A program that that is intended to make the miners and the whole working class kneel down before the criminal policy of class collaboration with the supposedly “nationalist” sector of the murderous army officers caste! But this totally symbolic measure wasn`t followed by the large majority of Bolivian workers that hate the murderous officers caste and still call for justice for their class brothers and sisters killed in October 2003.

But once more, the COB and FSTMB leaders enjoyed the assistance of the fake Trotskyism to carry throug this policy. Lora`s POR joined the chorus of those calling for the militarization of Huanuni, applying that old policy of Stalinism in search of a “red” military to subdue the proletariat to. (see box below)

The same old Stalinist policy of a bloc with the “patriot” military has long been tragic for the Latin American proletariat. Thus, during the glorious Chilean revolution of the “cordones industriales” (industrial belts, the name given to the linked nuclei of soviet-type organizations in that revolution) in the ‘70s, the Socialist Party and the Comunist Party –both of the supported by the same counterrevolutionary policy of the Castroite bureaucracy – made the Chilean workers believe there could be a “peaceful road to socialism”.
They made them believe that without arming themselves they could defend their gains; that without creating dual power, splitting the army and the murderous officers caste, they could achieve national liberation. In hundreds of revolutions this Stalinist policy has been already been proved to be counter-revolutionary. In the Chilean tragedy, the “patriotic” officer who was appointed by Allende as Commander in Chief of the Amy, was no other than… Pinochet, the dictator who massacred the Chilean workers and poor peasants.

Stop the workers’ organizations kneeling at the feet of Morales’ government with its pacts with business and the Cruceña oligarchy!
Down with the murderous officers caste of the Bolivian army!
For committees of rank and file soldiers that democratically choose their officers and send delegates to all the worker and peasant organizations!


Against the policy of Morales and the COB Castroite leadership, we Trotskyists say that the only way to stop the killings in Huanuni and to smash the fascist gangs that are being formed , is to take the path of the heroic Bolivian revolution of 1952 that destroyed the army and created worker and campesino militias of the COB.

Throw out of the workers organizations the bosses’ agents and the murderous officers’ caste of the armed forces!
Everybody to Huanuni!
Assemblies from all the workers and campesinos movements to send delegates to Huanuni now!
The Bolivian revolution must rise up again, rebuild its headquarters, expel from its ranks the treacherous leaders who collaborate with the class enemy, and re-enter the road of October 2003 and of the Bolivian revolution of 1952.


Oppose the fraud of the “Bolivarian Revolution” proclaimed by the national bourgeoisie and their major imperialists partners all over the continent (such as MERCOSUR and the TLC) who are preventing the masses from defending themselves from the governments and regimes attacking them as in Mexico and Chile.
Oppose the traitors who make the proletariat kneel at the feet of Chávez whose oil feeds the US-UK war machine that massacres in Iraq, and prepares the way for Fidel Castro to restore capitalism in Cuba.
In summary, oppose the den of thieves of the revolution in the World Social Forum, and renew the Bolivian revolution again to fight for the workers and campesinos revolution, demolishing and destroying the machinery of the bourgeois state.

Out with the counter-revolutionary armed thugs of the cooperativista bosses sent by Evo Morales Government and the transnational companies to divide and smash the miners!
Stop the “Bolivarian Revolution” fraud!
For the worker and peasant revolution!


International Supplement of the Internationalist Trotskyists of Bolivia and Argentina
Jointly Issued by Octubre Rojo Internacionalista (Bolivia) – Liga Obrera Internacionalista-CI (Argentina) Members of the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (LFT)

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POR and LOR: The Role of the fake Trotskyists at Huanuni

The renegades –fake Trotskyists – (former Trotskyists who claim to still be Trotskyists) are a left leg of the treacherous class-collaborationist policy of the COB leaders that sells-out the workers struggle.

Facing the Huanuni events, Lora’s POR again played the same deadly role it has been playing since October 2003: as the fundamental support of the Castroite bureaucracy (first Solares, now Montes) at the head of the COB.

POR leads a number of unions e.g. the La Paz city teachers, retired miners of Cochabamba, and student unions in different Bolivian universities. POR could have sent dozens of delegates with a mandate from the rank and file, voted by grass-root assemblies of the organizations it leads, in support of the wage-earning miners. Those forces, together with the Huanuni miners, could have called for the El Alto worker organizations to break with the collaborationist leadership of Patana and Mamani and to recreate the headquarters of the revolution. POR has done none of this.

Far from this, speaking about Morales’ government, POR wrote in its paper:“Facing the bloody evidence of the systematic assaults of the cooperativistas whose aim is to control all of Posokoni Hill, (Morales government) refused to use the public force to prevent the confrontation. And when the bloody events occured, it proved its incapacity to prevent the slaughter choosing to transfer its responsibility to (the state office for) Human Rights, the Ombudsman and the Clergy (Masas Nº 2012, 13/10/06, our emphasis).

So Lora’s POR, like Montes of the COB and the leaders of the FSTMB, makes Evo responsible for not having sent the “public forces” –that is, the cops and the murderous Armed Forces- to Huanuni. Not very surprising! It is the same old POR policy of telling the workers they have to build an alliance with the (supposedly) “red officers” of the army, which that party has organized for decades in the organization “Vivo Rojo”.(Red Alive) Today the POR advances the same policy that 35 years ago help to strangle the 1971 Bolivian revolution, by supporting – together with COB bureaucracy and the Stalinists – General Torres the then-president of Bolivia whom they introduced as an “anti imperialist” and even “socialist” officer.

So, while the leadership of the COB, the Stalinists, POR and other groups were entertaining themselves talking in the Popular Assembly, they adamantly refused to organize the workers and peasants’ militias to confront the coup General Banzer was openly preparing. As a result workers and peasants were utterly defeated and massacred, while Lechín (then COB’s head), Lora and his POR and General Torres (already deposed), organized abroad, “in exile” a “Revolutionary Anti-imperialist Front” that had the goal of seizing power and achieving socialism in Bolivia.!!!

But POR`s infamous policy doesn’t end here. The article above also says “…in this struggle, the wage-earning miners embody Bolivian interests and it is inconceivable that the State will not assume its responsibility for holding onto its own wealth (…). The wage-earning miners’ struggle is the struggle of the entire country. It is all about the destiny of the national economy and that is why a big mobilization of the exploited is imperative to force this government to renew the state mining business. Which means the restitution to the COMIBOL of the management of the most important mines that are today operated by private (both national and transnational) medium and large mining companies," (our emphasis).

It is impossible to speak more clearly. Lora’s POR calls to exert pressure on the popular front government and the bourgeois state. It is feeding illusions of the possibility that a bourgeois government, which in the end is a servant of the transnational monopolies, to meet the Bolivian miners and entire working class’ demands of nationalization of the whole mining business without compensation and under workers control! Alas, it is the same government that has just handed over El Mutun hill, just sent the fascist cooperativistas’ armed gangs to kill the Huanuni miners!

POR proves once more to be the party of the Castroite bureaucracy in the Bolivian revolution, the same role played by all the liquidators of Trotskyism on our continent, having dragged the flag of the Fourth International under the feet of Stalinism.

As a fifth leg of this treacherous class-collaborationist policy, there is the PTS from Argentina and its satellite group in Bolivia, LOR (CI). The PTS says: “the wage-earning miners had got solidarity not just from their community but also from other miners, students and popular sectors of Oruro. The Bolivian Worker Center (that is, the COB) marched on Tuesday along La Paz streets in solidarity with Huanuni and its demands” (LVO 208, 12/10/06). There is no mention of Montes` policy of “militarization”, so in fact covering up and whitewashing the COB class-collaborationist leadership.

In these matters of life and death for the proletariat, the PTS and its satellites don’t show the least interest. Why bother? They already have their Constituent Assembly, that which they claimed during 2003 had to be set up in Bolivia! For them, the masses would be now “having their experience with bourgeois democracy”. PTS’ policy for an IPT [Workers Political Institution, a euphemism for PT] has already failed as well as their flirting with Solares [former COB head] and the COB bureaucracy. They are unquestionably a useless link in Bolivian reformism, but always happily hanging from the skirts of those responsible for the handing over of the Bolivian revolution –the COB bureaucracy.

We ask them: Would you please show us a program to confront fascism with a tactics of united front of all the working class and popular fighting organizations in Bolivia? Silence. Perhaps, a policy to remove definitely the COB treacherous leadership, sending delegates to fight in Huanuni and re-group working class ranks? Silence. What do you think about “national” armed forces going to “defend” the miners, as Montes and POR proclaim? Silence…. Silence is the only answer.

“ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!”

Long live the heroic workers’ and campesinos’ commune of Oaxaca!

On the 2 of October, 38 years since the massacre of Tlatelolco in 1968,(1) the eyes of the proletarian vanguard of the Americas and the world are fixed on the workers and people of that Mexican city that have created their own Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) against the power of the bourgeois ruling class. There, on the 14 of June, defeating the police and the forces of repression sent by the PRI Governor Ulises Ruiz to smash their occupation of the central plaza of Oaxaca, the Zocalo, the striking teachers, took control of the city, created the Popular Assembly, formed their own self-defense committees, and established the workers and campesinos’ Commune of Oaxaca.(2) This commune is a revolutionary conquest not only of the Mexican working class, but of America and the world, yet it will not prevail unless its struggle and demands are generalised and adopted by the rest of the workers and poor farmers of Mexico and the world.

The heroic struggle of the Oaxaca Commune is at the head of the enormous workers and campesinos’ insurgency that has been shaking Mexico for several months, like the miners and steel workers of Michoacán, and the workers and campesinos uprisings in Atenco and Texcoco. The call has gone out to the workers of Mexico and the world to come to the defence of the Oaxaca commune. It is surrounded by the military forces of Fox and his successor Calderón, and by the PRI paramilitaries, who are defending the PRI state government of Ulises Ruiz, demanding that the leaders of the APPO “negotiate”. But If the APPO remains firm in its central demand to replace Ruiz, the ruling regime of the Mexican bourgeoisie in collaboration with US imperialism, is prepared to smash the Commune in blood and fire.

It is no accident that this rising insurgency has its parallel on the other side of the “border” in the United States, where 12 million Latino migrants have begun to fightback against the slave labor conditions and racist persecution of the immigration laws in the United States. Joining together in this struggle, the US and Mexican masses are rising up against imperialist domination of Latin America, and against its re-colonisation offensive under NAFTA that imposes slave labor conditions and super-exploitation of workers and campesinos on both sides of the border. Because in Mexico and the United States there is only one working class and one revolution, the ghost of the Mexican revolution now haunts the US imperialists who know that no 'Wall', ‘border police’ or ‘minutemen militias’ can prevent that revolution from entering the heart of US imperialism.

The revolutionary upsurge of the working class and exploited peoples of Mexico, creating their advance guard in the Oaxaca Commune, joined with the struggle of their class brothers and sisters in the US, and alongside the heroic struggles of the Chilean working class and the resistance of the Bolivian workers vanguard defending the mines of Huanuni, proves that the Latin American revolution is alive and resisting the fraud of the “Bolivarian Revolution” of Chávez, Morales, Fidel Castro and the World Social Forum that is today showing its true face by killing miners at Huanuni to defend the client regimes and governments of MERCOSUR that serve the imperialist monopolies.


NAFTA enslaves Mexico to imperialism and the fraudulent and repressive ‘transitional’ regime of ‘alternates’

Today the Mexican masses are rising up after 12 years of resistance to the North American Free Trade Agreement, the NAFTA, which began on 1st January 1994. The day that NAFTA came into effect, the campesinos of Chiapas rose up in an armed rebellion. To the war cry of “Down with the NAFTA” the insurgents stood up against the pact that allowed imperialism to strip them their land rights under the 1917 Constitution. The Chiapas popular rebellion and the economic crisis – the “tequilazo” – that followed shortly after, severely weakened the legitimacy of the Priato, the regime of the PRI that had ruled semi-colonial Mexico for more than 50 years. (3)

In order to prevent the masses from sweeping away the Priato, the imperialists and the Mexican bourgeoisie negotiated the “transition pact” – also supported by the PAN and the PRD – which consisted of measures to combat electoral corruption and fraud, including the “democratization” of the PRI.

But despite these reforms, the Priato collapsed in 2000 under renewed attack by the masses, who breaking from their bureaucratic leaders began mobilisations of students, workers and campesinos. For example, in the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) students went on strike for 10 months, and then occupied the university to force the release of 200 prisoners. At the Mexe Teachers College (in Tepatepec, Hildago province) students went on strike over poverty conditions and were supported by workers and campesinos who disarmed police and took them as hostages to force the release of imprisoned students.(4)

In the face of what looked like the re-opening of the Mexican revolution, imperialism and its lackey bourgeoisie, abandoned the Priato and its failed “transition pact” and devised a new plan to divert the masses back to the elections to vote for ‘alternatives’ to the hated PRI. The different fractions of the bourgeoisie create a new regime – the “regime of the alternates”. Instead of a single-party system like the Priato, the three parties, the PRI, PAN and PRD (both the PAN and PRD had emerged out of the PRI in the 1990s) were to be presented as ‘alternative’ governments.


The PRD and EZLN ‘baits’ the trap

To set this trap, they used the ‘leftist’ credentials of the leaders of the PRD, in particular Cardenas, and the EZLN, who had already signed the ‘San Andréas Accords’ in 1996 with the PRI, in which they renounced the fight against NAFTA and the Priato for land rights, in exchange for the “formal autonomy” of the Chiapas peasant communities. In 1997 the PRI lost control of Congress, and in 2000 Fox and the PAN won the presidency, ending the 70 year rule of the Priato. So came into existence, the first ‘alternate’ government, that of the PAN.

Thus in Mexico the political regime changed without any direct intervention of the revolutionary masses, but on the basis of an agreement between different fractions of the bourgeoisie and imperialism. This self-reform of the bourgeois regime from above we call ‘Bismarkism’ as it is loosely analagous to the policy of the bourgeois German Chancellor, Bismarck, in the late 19th century.

In the revolution of 1848 in France, for the first time in history, the rising proletariat had entered the fight against the monarchy on the side of the bourgeoisie, but then threatened to overthrow the bourgeoisie itself. The terrified French and European bourgeoisies turned and smashed the working class with blood and fire. To avoid the same threat in Germany, Bismarck negotiated a ‘peaceful’ transition to a bourgeois regime which allowed German capitalism to develop without the revolutionary overthrow of feudal social relations.

It is in this sense that we call the plan of the Mexican bourgeoisie to reform the regime from above in a pact with US imperialism, ‘Bismarckian’. But today, it is ‘senile’ because in the epoch of imperialism the destruction of the productive forces means that the ‘compromise’ between reactionary imperialism and the national bourgeoisie leaves no room for ‘democracy’, and so ‘Bismarckism’ must directly attack the proletarian revolution.

With the electoral victory of Fox in 2000, the Mexican bourgeoisie paraded this senile Bismarckian regime before the masses as the ultimate in 'democracy'. But this regime was just as dedicated to the NAFTA and administering the double and triple chains of super-exploitation of Mexico, that it was a no less fraudulent, corrupt and repressive than the old Priato. The ‘alternate’ PAN government became the direct agent of US imperialism. Despite its formal ‘parliamentary democracy’, it took on a Bonapartist character, attempting to reconcile class conflict in the ‘national’ interest. Yet, like the Priato, it resorted to the same old fraud in stealing the 2006 Presidential election from the PRD. So in the eyes of the masses, it took the PAN just 6 years to exhaust its ‘democratic’ credentials and to pass on the defence of ‘democracy’ to the defeated ‘third alternate’ the PRD.

The ‘alternate’ PRD led by Lopez Obrador (AMLO) and supported on the ‘left by the Stalinists, Castroists, and the fake-Trotskyists in the WSF, today plays a key role in containing the exploited and oppressed masses, preventing their protest against the Fox-Calderón electoral fraud from turning the Federal District (DF) and all of Mexico into one big Oaxaca Commune. This explains the occupation of the Zocalo of Mexico City “against fraud” and “for democracy”, and the PRD's support of the APPO’s demand to remove the PRI machine in their state by constitutional means. By posing as anti-imperialist and pro-democracy the PRD leadership tries to fool the masses into thinking that they can have ‘democracy’ without breaking with imperialism. This is the real fraud because Obrador and the PRD have no interest in breaking from NAFTA and US imperialism.

The critical role played by Lopez Obrador, and also by the EZLN – as we shall see below – is in response to the uprisings of the workers and farmers to the NAFTA regime. When the masses threaten to make a revolution and wipe the NAFTA regime off the map, the ‘third alternate’, the PRD comes to its aid, backed by the prominent Latin American leaders of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ and their agents in Mexico, and supported by Castroism and all the reformist leaders in the World Social Forum.


Defend the Oaxaca Commune!
Down with Ulises Ruiz! All power to the APPO!
For all militant workers and campesinos organisations in Mexico to send mandated delegates of the base to Oaxaca to organize its defense and a nationawide general strike!

After 12 years of NAFTA, US imperialism has intensified its offensive against Mexico to complete the re-colonisation of Mexico and guarantee its superprofits. It wants to privatise PEMEX (Mexican State Petroleum) and and the national electricity company. It is no accident that the new president, Felipe Calderón, winning by fraud, is the ex-minister of energy of the Fox government.

The anti-imperialist uprisings are the workers, campesinos, and students reply to imperialism’s offensive, and the Oaxaca Commune is the most advanced of these uprisings. The Mexican bourgeoisie, the government of Fox-Calderón and the NAFTA regime are well aware of the terrible danger that the Commune – whose example begins to spread far and wide in Mexico to Guerrero and at least 10 other states – poses to their private property and class rule.

They understand clearly that in Oaxaca there are two absolutely irreconcilable class forces facing each other. On one side, is the power of the imperialistic monopolies, the national bourgeoisie, and its armed institutions and paramilitary gangs. On the other side, is the power of the workers, campesinos and other oppressed people of Oaxaca with their own institution – the APPO. The APPO unites almost 400 workers', campesinos', students' and popular organisations in struggle, provides its own independent justice, has formed its own organs of self-defense, and is now the only power recognised as legitimate by the workers and the all exploited Oaxaqueños.
That is why US imperialism and its lackey NAFTA bourgeoisie offer APPO the “carrot” of negotiation, but at the same time prepare their military forces to smash it. This is just like the popular front government of Morales in Bolivia. While seated at the negotiation table with the union miners of Huanuni and agreeing to the 1500 jobs that the people of region demanded, at the same time it was conspiring with the self-employed miners to attack the union miners and to privatize the mine!

The same trap is being prepared against the Comuneros of Oaxaca. While the Secretary of the Oaxala state government says that he will meet the demands of the teachers for increased pay, drop the charges against the leaders of the APPO and release the political prisoners, the Senate rejects the only non-negotiatable demand of the APPO, for the removal of the state governor Ulises Ruiz (URO), on the constitutional grounds that a ‘vacuum of power’ does not exist. Some of the leaders of APPO take this as a signal to pressure the rank and file teachers to give up this demand and return to work. But in the event that the rank and file votes to continue the strike then the Fox-Calderon Federal government is preparing, together with the PRI Oaxaca state government, to use the troops and the “porros”, the PRI paramilitaries who have already killed at least 6 strikers, to smash the Commune with blood and fire.(5)

It is necessary to rally the international working class forces in response to the call of the Commune:

Long live the Commune and its demand “All power to the people”!
Down with Ulises Ruiz!
All power to the APPO!
Immediate and unconditional freedom for all political prisoners!
All the militant workers' and campesinos' organisations must send delegates mandated by the rank and file to Oaxaca to guarantee the defense of the Commune and to organize a national general strike to prevent the repression, and to generalise the Commune and its objectives to all the Mexican masses!

The heroic oaxaqueños comuneros have already organized for their self-defense, creating more than 3,000 coordinated and centralized barricades, and workers' and campesinos' self-defence committees to defend them, “Cuerpo to topiles” or “guard corps”.

Immediate formation of defence committees nationwide to defend the workers and campesinos, their organizations and their struggles from the the police and the army, and from the “porros” of the union bureaucracy “charra” and of the white guards of the landowners who openly kill the campesinos!


The EZLN has the responsibility to stop the isolation of Oaxaca!
The workers and campesinos of Chiapas and Guerrero must stand next to their Oaxaqueños brothers and sisters!

Oaxaca cannot be isolated when its slogans, “Down with NAFTA”, “Land for the campesinos” and “Down with the the hated regime”, are the same slogans raised by the Chiapas insurgents in 1994. In the neighboring state of Guerrero the oppressed masses are already building Popular Assemblies. The workers and campesinos of Chiapas and Guerrero must be the first to respond to the call of their brothers and sisters of the Oaxaca Commune and unite in a same fight against imperialism and the NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD!

The EZLN is at the moment giving its verbal support to the fight of the oaxaqueños communeros. Subcomandante Marcos (Delegate Zero) writes letters and crosses Mexico by motor scooter organising the “Other Campaign”. Enough of passivity and verbal support! The EZLN must make available for the defense of the Oaxaca Commune and its struggle for victory, all its resources, and call on the workers and campesinos of Guerrero to rise up and to follow their example, and create a Federation of Workers and Campesinos’ Communes of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas. This is the only way to revive the Mexican revolution, of overthrowing the fraudulent regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD, finishing with imperialism and the NAFTA, expropriating the land for the landless, and realising the demands for which so many of the chiapanecos gave their lives from 1994.


Down with the fraudulent NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and the PRD!

To make sure that the Oaxaca Commune survives and is victorious, its struggle and its demands must be taken up by all Mexican workers and campesinos. This means smashing the NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD and its fraudulent ‘democracy’. For that reason, it is necessary to raise the demands that the Mexican workers and campesinos organisations break all their ties to the bourgeoisie, and that their leaders immediately convene a National Popular Assembly of delegates of the rank of file of all the workers, students and campesinos’ fighting organisations, to centralize the struggles, and organize national general strike that will continue until the government of Fox-Calderón and the NAFTA regime of PAN, PRI and PRD are swept away, and that a new government that can meet the urgent demands of the exploited masses of Mexico has been created.

Down the regime of the fraudulent NAFTA regime of the PAN, PRI and PRD!
End the NAFTA plunder of Mexico!
Expropriate without compensation the landowners and the imperialists, Land to the landless! Expropriate the bankers without compensation, and create one state bank under workers’ control to provide cheap credit for the campesinos!
No to the privatization of PEMEX!
Nationalize without compensation and under workers control all monopolies and the privatized companies!
Worthwile work and living wages for all, distributing the working hours among all those willing to work with a minimum wage set by the family cost of living!

Real national independence, land for the landless, and bread and work for the workers are objectives that can only be won by a provisional revolutionary Workers’ and Campesinos' Government, supported by workers’ and campesinos’ militias, following the revolutionary overthrow of the hated NAFTA regime.

A Workers’ and Campesinos’ Government will be the only government capable of guaranteeing a truly sovereign Constituent Assembly that breaks with imperialism, solves the agrarian question and in which the oppressed masses of Mexico can discuss democratically the solutions to its problems.


Emergency call to the workers and poor farmers of the United States, Latin America and of the world:
Stand up in defense of the Commune of Oaxaca!

The main ally of the comuneros of Oaxaca and the Mexican oppressed peoples, is the North American working class, and in particular, the millions of Latino immigrant workers of the United States. For the North American proletariat, the NAFTA means dismissals, wage cuts, loss of rights and privileges, and losses of benefits such as health schemes and pensions. For the Mexican working class and exploited people, the NAFTA is super-exploitation, free trade zones (maquilas), slavery, plundering the nations resources, and driving peasants off the land. The working class of the United States must rise in defense of the Commune of Oaxaca and its Mexican class brothers and sisters, demanding:

We are a same class on both sides of the border!
Down with the NAFTA! Down with the Wall of Bush, Hillary Clinton and Co!
End the persecution, super-exploitation, deportation and murder of the Mexican and Latino immigrant workers in the United States!
Immediate citizenship and all social, economic, political and trade union rights for all immigrant workers!

The NAFTA increases the profits of the US monopolies and the Mexican lackey bourgeoisie, and decreases the wages of the combined North American working class. It is necessary to increase the wages of the the workers and reduce the profits of the bosses on both sides of the border!

Equal pay for equal work!
The same conditions of work and benefits won by North American workers, for Mexican workers!
For the unity of the working class of North America in defeating the union bureaucracy of the AFL-CIO servants of US imperialism and the “Republicrats”, and the Mexican union bureaucracy, “charra”, hired thugs of the NAFTA regime of PAN, PRI and PRD!

The Leninist Trotskyist Fraction, answers the call of the Oaxaca Commune with its own Emergency Call to all workers', students' and poor farmers' organisations of America and the world to take to the streets, to surround the Mexican embassies and consulates, to make mobilizations, strikes etc., in support to the heroic fight of the workers and the oppressed people of Oaxaca to stop the repression and any attempt by Fox, Calderón and the hated NAFTA regime to smash the Commune in blood and fire.


Leninist Trotskyist Fraction - 20 October 2006

NOTES

(1) see Scoop

(2) see Narconews

(3) From mid 1930s, the Mexican economy was highly protected. The state nationalised petroleum, electricity, railroads, telecommunications, and continued with some agrarian reforms. This was a continuation of the Mexican revolution of 1910-1917, now under the one party rule system of the PRI (ato). The Priato was an agreement between imperialism and the ruling class of around 24 families which ruled over the masses with statised unions led by the bureaucracy (“charros”) and enforced by the an organization of union killers (“porros”) eliminating any dissidence in the workers ranks.
The campesinos were controlled by buying the loyalty of local political bosses and heads of indigenous communities. All of this was centralised by an immense state bureaucratic apparatus which employed around six million people.
The Priato began in the mid- 1930s as a Bonapartismo “sui géneris” – that is to say, a bourgeois nationalist regime under the Lazaro Cardenas government, balanced between imperialism and the Mexican bourgeoisie and masses. But over more than 50 years it inevitably became increasingly pro-imperialist. The decline of the Priato began in the 1980s, when the imperialist offensive first caused a crisis of the external debt (1982) and then a huge devaluation after the Wall Street collapse of 1987. The Priato was by then the direct instrument of the savage imperialist plans for privatizations, deregulation, land grabs, maquila plants and massive immigration to the North, and guarantor of the super-exploitation of Mexican labor for the Yankee bourgeoisie. It thus began to lose its historic legitimacy in the eyes of the masses.
In order to retain the masses loyalty, the PRI created two clones. The son of Lazaro Cardenas founded the PRD as a sort of rebirth of the 1930s PRI. The PAN emerged as a more conservative and pro-imperialist variant. The enormous mobilizations of the masses against the electoral fraud in 1988 which was widely believed to have cost Cardenas victory, saw the beginning of an enormous worker and campesino swing against the Priato. This was boosted by the onset of civil war in Chiapas in 1994. Therefore, to prevent the masses revolutionary advance to overthrow the Priato, imperialism and the bourgeoisie devised its “transition pact”.

(4) Mexe Teachers College is one of the oldest of a network of 16 residential rural teaching colleges set up in 1922 as a result of the Mexican Revolution to train campesino teachers. By the 1990s the PRI regarded these colleges as an unnecessary cost so has kept them underfunded. The average per capita budget is less than $1,000 a year, with the average citizen spending only about $1.20 a day on food, enough for rice, tortillas and beans. At times the rural women have had no bathing water or cooking fuel. Classrooms, labs and dormitories are in a state of disrepair. These were the conditions that led to the strikes at El Mexe and Amilcingo, in the State of Morelos.
On March 7, 2000, about 200 students and their families occupied the dean's office at Mexico City's UNAM (the Spanish acronym for National Autonomous University of Mexico). The occupation was to demand the release of over 200 students jailed during the recent 10 month long students strike. See wsws

(5) For most recent events see narconews

The 'Bolivarian Revolution' of Chavez, Morales and Castro has stolen the Bolivian Revolution. Part 3

Chapter 5: The tasks of the moment

The most urgent task is to break with the government of Evo Morales, from the treacherous bureaucracy that ties workers to the CA, and for revolutionaries to win the leadership of the Bolivian working class

(20) The alliance of the treacherous leaders of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie has again pushed the Bolivian revolution to the edge of the abyss. The popular front ties the hands of the proletariat behind their backs, breaks the worker/peasant alliance, and prepares the way for the counter-revolution to smash the workers and exploited people with fire and blood.
Stop kneeling before the popular fron government of Morales, to the bourgeoisie and its Constituent Assembly! Enough of the poor miners and peasants going begging to the 250 deputies of the MAS and Rosca in the CA! End the subservience to the “democratic front” with the Morales government, which is the “left” cover of the transnational companies and the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie and their fascist gangs!

The Theses of Pulacayo, the historical program of the Boivian proletariat states clearly, “
1. - We are united in the class struggle. We say that the class war against the exploiters is a war to the death. In this we must destroy all callaborators in the workers ranks. The road to treason was opened by the infamous popular fronts, that is to say, the fronts that, renouncing the class struggle, unite the proletariat, petty bourgeois and some sectors of the bourgeoisie. The popular front has caused many defeats for the international proletariat. The most cynical expression of the negation of the class struggle, of delivering the oppressed to the class enemy, and the most degenerate of popular fronts is that called “national unity". This is a bourgeois slogan straight out of the mouth of the reformists. “National Unity” means unity of the bourgeois with its servants so as to manipulate the workers. “National Unity” means defeat of the exploited and victory of the Rosca. We cannot speak of “national unity” when the nation is divided into social classes enbarked on a war to the death. While there continues to exist the regime of private property only the traitors and the agents of imperialism can dare to speak of “national unity”.
For that reason we must demand that all the organizations in Bolivia that speak in name of the working class and claim to defend its interests, starting with the COB, the COD, COR and the Mining Federation, must immediately break with the bourgeoisie, the popular front government of Morales and Garcia Linera, and the fraudulent CA. We must demand that they embark on the road of struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government, empowering once more the headquarters of the revolutionary workers and peasants in El Alto, and reviving the organs of independent self-organisation of the workers and poor peasants such as militias to smash the fascist gangs of the Santa Cruz oligarchy.

By putting the demand on the leadership of the COB to break with the bourgeoisie and lead an independent workers struggle, we have a powerful lever to expose in front of the workers the treacherous character of the current leadership that time and time again has refused go down the revolutionary road. By this means the existing leadership will be revealed as the collaborators of the bosses in the workers movement and will bge replaced by a revolutionary leadership of the COB that will fight to transform that organisation into an armed, centralised force in the working class. To win the revolutionary leadership is the urgent task of the moment. It is a matter of life and death to the Bolivian proletariat.

The life and death task, to form workers and peasants militias to smash fascism and expropriate the transnational companies and the bourgeoisie of the Media Luna


(21) The popular front and fascism are two different policies used by the bourgeoisie against the workers and peasants’ revolution. While both serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, the popular front is used to trap the workers organisations into collaboration with, and subordiantion to, the bourgeoisie. Fascism however, has the aim of physically destroying the working class and its organizations of struggle, including the reformist workers organizations.

The bourgeois character of the popular front means that far from opposing fascism, it tries to negotiate with it, for as we have seen, the bourgeoisie fears not fascism but the proletarian revolution. For that reason, it is not possible to fight the fascists and defend the lives of workers, peasants and their families by appealing to the government of Evo Morales and Garcia Linera. This government is the servant of the Rosca and the transnational companies, who allow the killers of October and the fascists who murdered Alex Guevara to go free, while it imprisons the comuneros of Ayo Ayo. Morales cannot fight the fascists while he calls on the masses to “unite with the Armed Forces in defense of the CA”. This is the army whose officers are trained at West Point, that killed over 100 martyrs in October, that assaults the workers of the LAN, that represses the people, and yet does not touch one hair of the facists of the “Civic Committees” of the Media Luna.

In fight fascism it is necessary create a united front all the workers and poor peasants organizations. Yet today, millions of poor farmers and layers of the workers have illusions in Morals and “their” Constituent Assembly, and call on it to defend them against fascism. The workers, led by a revolutionary party, would call on those millions of exploited people to unite and organize to defend their families against the “civic youth” and bloody fascist gangs of the Media Luna. With a revolutionary leadership the workers would day to those workers and peasants with illusions in Morales and the CA:

“We have no confidence in Morales nor in the fraudulent and undemocratic CA. We maintain our total independence of that bourgeois government that tries to steal our revolution. Only by making our own workers and peasants’ government we will be able to overcome our poverty and meet our needs. But, today, the fascists threaten not only us us but also you, peasants and workers who want to defend the CA., etc. Therefore, while we do not convince each other, and while we continue to discuss and criticize each another freely, there is nothing to stop us from uniting to defend our organizations, and our lives, from the fascists. So, let us immediately create joint workers and peasants’ militias and march to Santa Cruz to smash the fascists”.

Build workers and peasants militias! That is the only guarantee of the workers and poor peasants lives! Five thousand workers, armed miners and poor farmers, converging on Santa Cruz to ‘clean it up’ with sticks of dynamite would teach a lesson to the “daddies boys” and “Union of Youth” that to live the armed people will meet force with more force! This would make it very difficult for the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie who openly recruit for their fascist bands in its “Civic Committees” to recruit more “daddies boys” for its fascist gangs. To make this happen, we must demand that the COB immediately forms workers and peasants militias, calling on all the the poor workers and farmers, men and women, over 18 years of age, to register for the militias in every office of the COB, the COR and the COD!

No reconciliation nor “unity” with the killer Armed Forces! With a powerful workers and peasants militia to fight the fascists, we have all the authority we need to call on the rank and file soldiers - the children of the workers and peasants under arms – to disobey its officers, to create committees of soldiers and non-commissioned officers, and to make the arms available to the workers militias to defend the revolution from the fascist gangs and the killer officer corps. This is the way to win the releasse of the comuneros of Ayo-Ayo and other prisoners in the jails of Morales and the Rosca, and to punish the killers of the hundreds of martyrs of the revolution!

The heroic Bolivian revolution will again return to the road to revolution, raising once more the militant demand of the workers and poor peasants in February of 2003, silenced today by the popular front: “Guns, shrapnel, Bolivia will not shut up!”
In order to smash fascism, the most powerful tool that the workers and poor peasants have, is to strike where it hurts the transnational companies, the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie and the landowning oligarchy that organises the fascist gangs, most: its private property!
Immediate expropriation without compensation of all the oil monopolies, Repsol, Petrobras, Totalfina, BP, etc.!
Immediate expropriation of all the properties of the bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni and Tarija, and all the properties of the landowners of the Media Luna!


Return to the program of October 2003 and May-June 2005 and rebuild the worker-peasant alliance

(22) Breaking with the popular front, the bourgeoisie and its CA, winning the revolutionary leadership of the COB, proving by its street fighting that it is the only class that can rescue Bolivia from destruction, the working class will be able to rebuild its organs of power and take back from the bourgeoisie the leadership of the poor farmers, so restoring the worker-peasant alliance destroyed by the treachery of the leaders of the workers.

For that to happen, it is necessary that the proletariat raises clearly again the program of October of 2003 and May-June of 2005, abandoned by the leaders of the COB in exchange for pressuring their “friend” Morales, to win the demands left by the 100 martyrs: Not 30%, or 50%, nor the fictitious semi-nationalization: but a real nationalization without compensation and under workers control of hydrocarbons, expropiating the oil wells, gas fields, refineries, machinery, offices, facilities, and all the funds of the plundering imperialistic transnational companies of Bolivia!

Against the swindle of the “agrarian revolution” announced by Evo Morales, it is necessary to once more raise the demand for the: expropriation without compensation of all the large estates and the land distributed among the poor peasants.

Reclaim for the poor peasants all the fertile land of the East that was expropriated by the bourgeoisie of the Media Luna, who fill their pockets exporting soybean while for the exploited masses there is only the poverty of the Altiplano! Smash the fascists to expropriate the land, is the demand that the proletariat makes to the poor peasant so that the peasants form their own militias alongside the workers miltias.

So that cheap credit, tractors, machinery, fertilizers are available to the small peasants, expropriate all the banks, with a single state bank under control of the workers!
Nationalization of the foreign trade to protect the small farmers of the countryside!
Against the offensive of the government of Morals, the minister of mines Villaroel and the leaders of the mining cooperativistas that try to take Huanuni and other mines from the wage-earning miners, and that enslave the workers of their cooperatives on miserable wages for piecework, without rights, social benefits, and force them to use their women and children to work in the mine so they can survive, the demand must be for the re-nationalizatión without compensation and under workers control of the Mutún and all the mines and mineral deposits.
In order to end the slavery of the contract miners at the hands of the cooperativistas, it is necessary to raise the program of Theses of Pulacayo:

For equal work, equal pay and conditions of work for all the miners!
For one collective work agreement to prevent “the great power of the capitalist to dominate the individual workers so that they are incapable to freely consent because their family poverty forces them to accept the capitalists terms in their work contracts” (Theses of Pulacayo).
This is the way to unify the mine workers rank and file!

End the unemployment and poverty wages of the workers!
It is again necessary to raise the program of the Theses of Pulacayo: Immediate wage increase, with a minimum wage sufficient to meet the consumption needs of every family and indexed according to the cost of living!
Work for all by introducing a movable scale of working hours!
Renationalize without compensation and under workers’ control, the LAB, Waters of Illimani and other privatised companies!
Against the rigged and fraudulent Constituent Assembly where 250 deputies of the MAS and Rosca discuss and haggle over the interests of the different bourgeois fractions and the transnational companies, it is necessary to immediately raise the demand for a National Congress of workers’ and peasants’ delegates of the rank and file of all the mass organizations in struggle, to create a centralilsed organ of workers and peasants’ power backed by militias, that can take back the stolen revolution and re-open the road to its victory.

Only a workers and peasants’ government supported by the armed self-organised masses can break with imperialism and complete the tasks of October of the 2003 and May-June of the 2005, guaranteeing land for the peasants, gas for the people, and bread and work for the workers.

Only such a government, that overthrows the Rosca and destroys the officer corps and its killer army, and that expropriates the expropriators, will be able to guarantee the peasants a truely democratic and sovereign Constituent Assembly such as they want today, proving at the same time that their own revolutionary government has already exceeded the role of the CA.
This is the way to recover the workers and peasants revolution that has been stolen today! The alternative is that the heroic revolution of the exploited Bolivian masses will face a new tragedy: its crushing at the hands of the counterrevolution.


Chapter 6: The extreme crisis of proletarian revolutionary leadership

(23) The future of the Latin American working class today depends upon the fate of the 3rd Bolivian revolution of the workers and poor peasants that began in 2003. The crushing of the Bolivian revolution would signify the victory of the class collaborationist regimes of the “Bolivarian Revolution” in Latin America, new extreme forms of Bonapartism, and the redoubling of the imperialist offensive on the continent, including the threat of direct armed interventions, for example, against, Venezuela.

A decisive defeat of the Bolivian revolution would mean a huge victory for capitalist restoration in Cuba and the transformation of the Castro bureaucracy into a new national bourgeoisie. Therefore, the outcome of the Bolivian revolution is critical in deciding the future of the first workers state in Latin America despite its extreme degeneration at the hands of the restorationist policy of the Castro bureaucracy!

The counterrevolutionary forces are mobilised all over the continental to defeat the Bolivian revolution. If the popular front cannot isolate and defeat the masses in struggle, then they will face the fascist counterrevolution – always kept in reserve by the bosses along with the splitting up of Bolivia into the hands of the different bourgeois fractions.

To break the trap of the popular front, to defeat the “Bolivarian Revolution”, to recover the stolen revolution and take it to victory, it is necessary to regroup the revolutionary forces all over the continent, to create organs of workers power to unite the world proletariat against the counter-revolutionary World Social Forum. In particular we must defeat the fake Trotskyists who have gone over to Stalinism to act as the left wing fo the “Bolivarian Revolution’ to betray the masses and steal their revolution.

For that reason, to revive the proto-soviet of El Alto as the headquarters of the miners, workers and poor peasants vanguard, so that the Bolivian revolution can win, our most urgent task is to call an International Conference the Principled Trotskyists and workers organizations, to regroup the revolutionary forces of the international proletarian vanguard in the class war at the side of the Bolivian workers and peasants, to coordinate their revolution with the international proletarian revolution, and declare war on all the treacherous agents of the bourgeoisie that proclaim the “Bolivarian Revolution” to prepare the defeat the Bolivian revolution and the world revolution. Only in this way will the revolutionary leadership that the heroic Bolivian proletariat needs and deserves be created.


The bankruptcy of the Pabolists of the POR, ‘ultraleft’ collaborators of the COB bureaucracyand the liquidation of the revolution into the ‘Constituent Assembly’ by the LOR-CI


(24) Since the beginning of the uprising of October of 2003 the POR Lora has played an ominous role. It has systematically supported the leadership of the COB - Solares, and now Montes, refusing build organs of workers and poor peasants power including militias. It constantly speaks of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “socialism”, but in practice has renounced the struggle for the proletarian revolution and the taking of the power by the proletariat.

In May-June of 2005, POR played a central role in the stealing of the revolutionary days that overthrew Mesa. Its leader, Vilma Plata, alongside Solares, Mamani, Choque and Patana, before 400,000 worker and peasant militants refused to call the indigenous national popular Assembly with delegates of the rank and file of the workers and peasants organisations in struggle, or to organize workers and peasants’ militias. Once again POR played a decisive role to stop the emergence of dual power, by preventing the masses from consolidating, centralizing nationally armed organsation that could have implemented the resolutions of the ‘headquarters of the revolution’ of the miners and the COR of El Alto. In this way, POR collaborated with Morales, Solares and co. to put Rodriguez in power, dissolve the organs of semi-dual power, and opened the way for the election in December of 2005 of Evo Morales to the presidency.

Today, once again, the POR Lora is a decisive link in Montes’ policy of using the COB to subordinate the proletariat to the popular front. In the first place, because although proclaiming itself as against the government of Morales and the CA, and against the Santa Cruz oligarchy, it offers no strategy or tacits on how workers can break with them, and to recover their stolen revolution. Once again it refuses to take up the fight for the creation of workers and peasants soviets or militias.

As opposed to the fascist threat, POR says nothing about forming workers and peasants militias to smash it. No does it call for a workers front against the fascist gangs. That is, it refuses to call for the workers and peasants who put their trust in the CA and Morales to confront the fascists to defend their organizations. On the contrary, it puts an equal sign between the popular front and fascism, with its slogans of “Death to the CA! Death to the reactionary right! Down with the incompetent government of Evo! All for the POR, Proletarian Revolution and proletarian dictatorship!” (Masses N° 2007, 1/09/06).

This is the same policy as Stalinism in the “third period” that took the German proletariat to defeat at the hands of fascism in the `30s. POR Lora refuses to fight to break Morales’ and the popular front control of the masses. It refuses to build unity in the workers ranks and reweld the worker-peasant alliance. It leaves to exploited people defencless before the fascist threat. Before the urgent demands of the working class and the poor peasants, before the traps and deceits of the popular front, before the threat of the fascist bands, the only thing that the POR says to the workers is… “All for the POR ”.

This policy complements, with the silence of the accomplice, the role of the leadership of the COB – formerly Solares, now Montes – to divert the workers into making demands on Morales government to redistribute the wealth. Thus by its economistic demands, it takes the workers out of the political fight, and into the hands of the imperialist monopolies, the popular front, the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie, the talkshop of the fraudulent CA, those that make the “policy” to steal and then ‘finish off’ the workers and peasants revolution.

This abject trade union cretinismo –despite POR’s bluster about the “proletarian revolution and dictatorship” – is directly expressed in its refusal to demand that all organizations that speak in the name of the working class to break with the bourgeoisie, to fight to create workers and peasants militias, to face the life and death question of the fate of the Bolivian revolution. POR acts as the other side of the coin of Montes and the COB leadership policy of subordinating the proletariat to a “democratic front” with the government of Morales and the national bourgeoisie. Not very often in history have we seen so many appeal to “revolution” and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a cover for the renunciation of revolution and the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat!

The Bolivian workers vanguard has stood with Trotsky – along with Marx and Lenin - one of the great revolutionary figures of history, by adopting the Theses of Pulacayo as the historical program of the workers of the Altiplano. By claiming to be ‘Trotskyists” the POR Lora has been betraying this program for more than half century. Because if its influence in the labor movement, the POR uses its main leaders and public figures to usurp the name of Trotsky to sell out the struggles of the working class, as it did for example, when Vilma Plata the opened the mass rally of 6 June 2005.

At the beginning of 21st century POR Lora has added yet another betrayal to its long history of collaboration in strangling Bolivian revolutions. It began with when it gave critical support to the MNR (Revolutionary National Militia) government of Paz Estenssoro in 1952, refusing to fight for “All power to the COB”. Next came its capitulation in 1971 to the “patriot” general Torres and the Stalinist “Anti-imperialist Revolutionary Front”. Then in 1985 POR Lora collaborated with the COB bureaucracy of Lechin to betray the great miners general strike. Today, usurping the name of the Trotskyism, POR has openly gone over to Stalinism with its talk of a future ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ combined with total subordination to the policy of ‘pressuring’ the popular front today.

At the side of the POR Lora Pabloites are the other servants of the popular front and the treacherous bureaucracy of the COB, such as as the group in Bolivia associated with the of PTS of Argentina, the LOR-CI. While for POR Lora everything is solved by the “dictatorship of the proletariat” -in-general, the LOR-CI responded to the Bolivian revolution of February 2003 to May-June 2005 with the panacea of a “free and sovereign Constituent Assembly”.

Thus, in February of 2003, when the workers and peasants won the streets by fighting at the barricades to the shout of “Gun, shrapnel, Bolivia will not shut up”, the LOR-CI raised the. . . Constituent assembly. In October of 2003, with the masses rose up to the shout of “Out with Goni, gas for the Bolivians”, with a semi-insurrection centred on El Alto, with embryos of workers militias, rank and file soldiers refusing to shoot against the people and being assassinated by their officers, and with Solares, Morales and Quispe conspiring to put Mesa in power to steal the masses struggle, the LOR-CI raised the . . .Constituent assembly. In May and June of 2005, came a new revolutionary attack of the masses, Mesa falls, and again the LOR-CI . . .Constituent assembly. And finally the Constituent Assembly for which the LOR-CI/PTS had fought so hard, arrived!

The LOR-CI/PTS justified this policy saying that the Bolivian revolution had to go through a “parliamentary stage” because the masses still had “illusions in bourgeois democracy”. Now what is the result of this policy with a CA in the hands of Evo Morales and the popular front? The imposition of the CA is not the “parliamentary stage of the revolution”, but its expropriation!

Today, when the consequences of this expropriation are clearly seen, the LOR-CI criticizes the undemocratic and rigged CA but hides the fact that for three years it put the demand for the CA at the centre of its program. Today it calls on the workers not to trust the CA and “to raise their own demands: genuine nationalization of hydrocarbons and the big mines, without compensation and under workers’ control; re-nationalisation of the “privatised” companies; a true agrarian reform eliminating the large estates; land and territory to the indigenous peoples; living wage and work for all; good health, education and housing; nonpayment of the external debt and a break with imperialism” (“The revolutionary process, the government of the MAS and the Constituent Assembly”, Workers Voice N° 15, September of 2006). That is to say, one more a variant of the policy of pressure on the Constituent Assembly.

In order to try to varnish over the truth of its policy of putting pressure on the popular front and its CA, the LOR-CI calls for an “independent perspective” and for an “independent class bloc” inside the COB.

The LOR-CI speaks a lot about “class independence”, while for three years it made the center of its program the struggle for a bourgeois institution like the Constituent Assembly. This was to subordinate the working class to the popular front and to the bourgeoisie and dissolve the organisms of semi-dual power that the masses had created, that is the truly independent organs of workers power and class independence!

In the many pages of LOR-CI documents there is no mention of fascism or the necessity to form workers and peasants militias to smash it. Really, which planet are these people writing about? The petty bourgeois current in the University of Buenos Aires that comprises the PTS, and its group in Bolivia, once more demonstrates not only its pacifism, but by default, its membership of Montes’ “democratic front” with the Morales government. Thus those who complete their break with Trotskyism and adopt the Gramscian language of “counterhegemony”, the “accumulation of power” and other fashionable nonsense, hide their head in the sand when the fascists gangs appear and make them kneel before the “democratic” bourgeoisie.

Thus, POR with its ultraleftist rhetoric, and the LOR-CI with its bloc with the “democratic front”, both refuse to create the workers and peasants militias, which today is the only way to win control of the COB, reforge the worker-peasant alliance, end the threat of the fascist gangs, and achieve the most basic demands of the masses mired in poverty by the ongoing collaboration of the national bourgeoisie with imperialsim. In this way, both currents are located in the trench alongside the oppressed masses, but instead of raising the demands for and independfent6, armed working class, raise instead the ‘Pivertist’ policy of pressuring the popular front.


The struggle to unite the revolutionary workers and peasants in Latin America, and to build a revolutionary internationalist party in Bolivia is the task of the principled Trotskyists!


(25) The theft of the workers and peasants revolution in Bolivia is an example once again that the crisis of the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat has been become extreme. The liquidation of the 4th International at the hands of the renegades of Trotskyism has caused an historic betrayal, for fourth time in 50 years of the Bolivian revolution, in 1952, 1971, 1985, and today.

This latest treason of the renegades of Trotskyism, now degenerated into open Stalinism, is today so blatant as to be clearly seen and recognised as the legacy of the liquidationist policy of Pabloism of 1952. The Bolivian proletariat will once more rise up from its imprisonment, but the traitors of Trotskyism will never rise up from their Stalinist gravel.

The fate of the working class and exploited today depends on how quickly the revolutionary vanguard of the world proletariat can rebuild the leadership that the heroic workers and poor peasants of Bolivia need and deserve.

There is no task more burning than to mobilise100% of the forces of the principled interanationalist Trotskyists worldwide to build a revolutionary party of the working masses of Latin America so that the heroic Bolivian revolution, today stolen, can be recovered and go on to victory. There is no task more urgent than to commit 100% of our resources to the struggle to defeat the traitors of all colors blocks the revolution, and to clear out of the path of the exploited masses all the rubbish and lies and deceptions of the liquidators of the 4th International.


(26) As was true of the Spanish revolution in the 1930s, today the stolen Bolivian revolution is the leading edge of the proletarian revolution in Latin America and the whole world. The proletariat of Latin America can only win if the Bolivian workers and peasants revolution wins, defeating the counter-revolutionary “Bolivarian Revolution” of Chávez, Morales, Fidel Castro and World Social Forum.

But for this to happen the healthy forces of Trotskyism must regroup internationally.
In 1952, the 4th International collapsed when its whole leadership capitulated to the popular front and betrayed the historic workers and peasants’ revolution that had begun in Bolivia. In 1953 the SWP (US)and other groups which formed the International Committee criticised their betrayal and corrected their program. But Pabloism had already weakened the 4th International to the point of breakdown. Then began a long series of capitulations, revisions and adaptations that ended with the total degeneration of the 4th International.

Today, at the beginning of 21st century, the betrayal of the Bolivian revolution in 2003 marks the total renunciation of the program of the 4th International by the renegades of Trotskyism. They are now open reformists in the World Social Forum, adopting the “theory”, strategy, program and role once played by Stalinism.

Under the baton of Fidel Castro and of the imposter Celia Hart Santamaría, the renegades of Trotskyism are forming united parties of the “Bolivarian Revolution” alongside Stalinists, Castroists and various fractions of the bourgeoisie – like P-SOL and their electoral front with the PSTU and the PCB in Brazil; PODERMOS in Chile, like the “Plenary of Autoconvocados” in Argentina. Now, Chávez has decided that it is time for one Bolivarian party in Venezuela -, since the existence of many parties “is against the interests of the revolution and popular unity”. The Venezuelan CP enthusiasticall supports this initiative, and proposes a “model”… the CP of the USSR under Stalin, the Chinese CP and the Cuban CP. The renegades of Trotskyism have all become chavistas, and will take their place in the united part of the “Bolivarian Revolution”.
The situation in Bolivia is like an unexploded bomb with its fuse lit. While the revolution has been contained and diverted by the popular front and the treacherous bureaucracy, this cannot last, and it is balanced on a point between the forces of reform and revolution, between the “Bolivarian Revolution” and the workers and peasants revolution, between Stalinism and Trotskyism, the destroyers of 4th International and the healthy forces to fight to rebuild the world part of socialist revolution.

To tip the balance in favour of the Bolivian masses, there is no more urgent task for all the healthy and revolutionary forces of 4th International anywhere in the world than to build a principled Trotskyist party in Bolivia. To do this we have to regroup the international Trotskyists and revolutionary workers organizations in an International Conference to create a new vanguard party in Latin America that fights for a socialist united states of Latin America.
A Latin American party that can unite the Bolivian workers vanguard with its militant class brothers and sisters in Argentina and Brazil; and in Chile were the masses take to the streets against the antiworker, repressive and pro-imperialistic, pinochetista-concertacionista, regime of the “socialits” Bachelet; and in Mexico in Oaxaca fights to bring down the anti-worker, repressive state government of the PRI Ulises Ruiz. A party which like a healthy nervous system, can unite the proletariat of Central and South America with the big battalions of the working class in the US which is strengthened by the militant power of twelve million Latino migrant workers.

We cannot build such a party without declaring war without mercy on the World Social Forum and in particular to defeat the fake Trotskyists that are playing a crucial role in the policy of class collaboration that seeks to destroy the Bolivian revolution and support the servant regimes and governments of the “Bolivarian Revolution”.

There is no time to lose: everything depends now on the revolutionary vanguard of the Latin American and world proletariat. To this task, the FLT contributes a nucleus of internacionalist cadres forged in the class struggle with the treacherous bureaucray and with the fake Trotskyists, an experience in many struggles of the workers in Bolivia and elsewhere in the last decades. We are also determined to build the embryo of such a vanguard party, uniting the revolutionaries cadres in Bolivia with those in Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Peru.

The confrontation between revolution and counterrevolution approaches a critical point in Bolivia, where the historical alternative “Communism or Fascism” has become immediate. There is no time that to lose: any delay in building the Latin American revolutionary party will be paid for with more sacrifices, suffering and blood by the Bolivian and Latin American proletariat. The task of the FLT and all the healthy forces of Trotskyism internationally is expressed in the fighting slogan: 100% of our forces to the internationalist Trotskyists of Bolivia!

International Coordinating Secretariat of the Leninist-Trotskyists Fraction
15 of September of 2006

Can the Oaxaca Commune Survive?

The Oaxaca Commune is rapidly becoming the focal point of the world class struggle. It has pushed the Zapatistas 'other campaign' off the map, even though Chiapas is right next door to Oaxaca. The Zapatisas model of revolution from below in which indigneous peasants would lead the backward workers has backfired.

The Fox government repression of Atenco, just outside of Mexico City back in May showed that small traders, gutsy and determined as they were, cannot stop the state machine without the help of the organised working class. It was not the flower sellers of Atenco who lost this argument, but Delegate Zero (subcombatant Marcos) who came out Zero by refusing to unite the traders with striking steel and mine workers.

What the struggle in Oaxaca shows is that the trendy Western pacifism of power-shifting - without-taking-power is exploded by the Oaxaca Commune. This Commune did not arise from an indigenous or peasant rebellion (and Oaxaca has around half of the indigenous people in Mexico). It arose out of a long strike by the poor teachers of Oaxaca fighting for better pay and conditions. The Teachers Union is Mexico wide and cripplingly bureaucratic - like most unions in Mexico that have been part of the PRI state machine that lives off the prestige of the 'frozen' Mexican revolution and the 1917 Constitution.

But in Oaxaca a minority inside the Teachers' Union won support for their strike and this has built into a hugely popular insurrection involving mass marches of over 1,000,000 and the ongoing occcupation of the city of Oaxaca and several radio and TV stations.

This shows that in Mexico as in the rest of Latin America, it is the organised working class like the radical teachers union, that can and must form the leadership of the mass movement which can meet the demands of the peasantry, indigenous movements, and unemployed workers. It proves, against all those who say that that the working class is dead, and that social movements have taken over the anti-capitalist fight, that the working class lives!

It proves yet again, that it is the working class that will lead the fight for democracy and against imperialism, and carry through the national revolution to go all the way to defeat NAFTA and imperialism, and defeat the national bourgeois, completing the national revolution as a socialist revolution.

The original demand of the strike to get rid of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz, who is part of the PRI party machine and responsible for numerous killings of militants, has issued a direct challenge to Fox's successor Calderon, the 'winner' of the rigged Presidential election. That election of course has been challenged by the loser Obrador, or AMLO as he is called after all of his initials. Massive demonstrations and occupations of the center of Mexico City by AMLOs supporters led to the calling of a national 'democratic' congress of the parliamentary left in September, the CND, which declared AMLO as the 'alternative President'. But, apart from offering his body as a symbolic shield against the repression of the Commune, AMLO's CND does not propose to rally the Mexican masses in the real defence of the Commune. That would lift the lid of Pandora's Box and along with the rest of the capitalist system AMLO would be history.

Meanwhile, Fox has sworn to remove the Oaxaca Commune before he hands over to Calderon on December 1. Troops are massing in Oaxaca, thousands of PRI paramilitaries are preparing to smash the Commune, and what to do becomes the order of the day. Most of the 'left' is hoping that some deal can be made, so that the Governor goes, some extra spending on education gives the teachers something to go home with, and everything goes back to almost normal. They cannot envisage an all out struggle winning, and the price of more deaths at this stage cannot be justified.

For revolutionaries the answer is like ABC. Already the Commune has built Barricades, and formed rudimentary Armed self-defence committees. They are not going to go home with any compromise deal. But this is minimal stuff. A few small arms from police stations, clubs and molotov cocktails are no match for the might of the paramilitaries armed with AK 47s let alone the Mexican army.

The Commune needs to be armed inside to resist military assault, but more even more important, armed outside, to undermine the state's ability to deploy its armed forces. The masses who occupied the centre of Mexico city to protest AMLO's 'defeat' by electoral fraud, have to say that the PRD needs more than a symbolic few bodies on the barricades in Oaxaca.
These workers need to flood to Oaxaca to boost the barricades. They need to call on all workers in unions to strike, independently of the PRI and union bureaucracy, to generalise their strikes into a general strike, and to set up barricades and road blocks. The long history of militant struggle in the mines and heavy industry shows that the rank and file of Mexico's huge working class can respond in crises with great solidarity.

This strike action must be generalised so that the solidarity actions are not isolated and open to repression. Self-defence committees need to be coordinated nationally as the basis of a people's army. This would put pressure on the ranks of the armed forces to disobey orders and to support the strike rather than kill the insurgents. By means of a general strike that brings the country to a halt, uniting the organisations of the working class, forming armed 'communes everywhere', the workers will create an alternative, or 'dual power' structure. By winning over the ranks of the military and defeating the paramiltary thugs, the question of state power is posed and the possibility of a revolutionary seizure of power put at the top of the agenda.

The Oaxaca commune can become the first revolutionary commune to follow in the footsteps of the Russian soviets and prove that the working class can 'storm heaven' as did the workers of Paris in 1871, but more than that, take the power at the head of the oppressed and exploited masses to build a new society as the members of the soviets did in 1917. But for this to happen, the vital ingredient that Paris lacked but Petrograd had, is the revolutionary party of the workers.

As Trotsky explains in his analysis of the Paris commune, comparing it to the Russian revolution, the mass movement has strong points and weak points. Its strength is it militancy and heroism. But its weakness is its absence of revolutionary leadership. Leadership cannot be simply responding to events willy nilly, but must condense the lessons of the history of workers struggles to know in advance what to do and what not to do. Without this leadership the strengths of the workers movements are dissipated by their weaknesses and lost.

In Paris 1871, the lack of a revolutionary leadership with the knowledge and will to unite and organise the struggle led to petty bourgeois leaders vacillating and opting for compromises with the enemy. The Commune did not seize power when it could have, but rather let it slip away in defeat. In Russia, by contrast, the Bolsheviks had decades of experience to draw on, and could guide the masses through the months in preparation for insurrection, without making fatal mistakes, until they were ready to seize power.

In Oaxaca the militancy and heroism of the masses are evident, but insufficient for victory. The majority of teachers are not yet revolutionary and are exposed to various competing political currents vying for leadership. Those who think that Obrador and the PRD can form the leadership will find that they are wrong, but at what cost? It is necessary to break the masses who have illusions in Obrador from the PRD. The revolutionary left is small, but does have a critical role to play. Some like the Militant tendency which is inside the PRD, puts its hopes in creating a split in the party. Others like the FT tendency reject working inside the PRD when its politicians are openly siding with Fox to defeat the Oaxaca commune. The main demand of the FT is to call for a 'revolutionary Constituent Assembly' outside the existing political constitutional structure.

Yet, working inside the existing constitution, or calling for a new even 'revolutionary' constitution, are both confining workers to the existing bourgeois power structures where individual electors vote for political representatives in the bourgeois/capitalist state. That is, all individuals or all classes get the right to vote. But the Oaxaca Commune is already creating an alternative power based on mass solidarity in which political representation is of the working class and other oppressed classes. The bosses and their petty bourgeois lackeys and goons are not represented, nor will they ever be. The military defence of the commune is therefore the start of any revolutionary program.

The revolutionary party in Oaxaca and Mexico must start from the lessons of the past communes - their successes and failures. The alternative power of the working class is the only basis on which the interests of the workers and oppressed peoples can be resolved. The program must be for a general strike to defend the Oaxaca commune; to create 'communes everywhere', armed and coordinated across the whole country, with workers and peasants militias to smash the paramilitaries and defend themselves against the state forces; to break from the state apparatus and the statised bureaucracy and their political parties; appealing to the ranks of the armed forces to refuse orders to suppress the Commune; and ultimately for a government of the workers and peasants that can expropriate the imperialists and the national bourgeosie and implement a planned socialist economy, as part of a federation of workers republics of the Americas.

heaven-storming

Revolutionary internationalist workers stand together with the heroic Bolivian wage-earning miners of Huanuni!

STOP THE MASSACRE OF THE MOST COMBATIVE SECTOR OF THE BOLIVIAN WORKING CLASS!

Out with the counterrevolutionary shock troops of the cooperativistas bosses, sent by the government of Evo Morales, his Minister Villarroel and the transnational companies, to divide and to massacre the working class!
Out with the army and the police who are accomplices in the massacre of workers and peasants!

While the miners of Huanuni, fought heroically with their blockade, pickets and road blocks, for the nationalisation of all mining under workers control, for 1500 new jobs for the unemployed miners and landless peasants, Morales and his minister Villarroel organized the shock troops of the cooperativistas bosses to kill the militant workers, just as Goni did in 2003, and to strengthen the fascist bands of Santa Cruz against the landless peasants.

The counterrevolutionary thugs of the industralist Villarroel, throw dynamite sticks into the homes of miners and their families and have tried to retake the state mine at Huanuni. The miners have defended the mine that they now control with their lives figthting hand to hand. Already there are tens of dead and wounded on both sides. The Miners Radio has been blown up, as have the tin processing machines in the mine.
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While he negotiates pacts for the plunder of Bolivia with the transnational companies and the fascist bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz in the Constituent Assembly, Evo Morales class collaborationist regime now massacres the workers and peasants who fight for their program of October 2003 “ Gringos Get Out! Nationalization now! Dignified work and wages for all!”

Down with the pact between Morales’ government and the fascist bourgeoisie of the Media Luna to calmly kill the most combative of the Bolivian working class! Down with the pact of the fraudulent Constituent Assembly to steal the revolution from the workers and poor peasants!

FOR THE IMMEDIATE NATIONALIZATION OF MUTÚN, OF ALL BOLIVIAN MINES AND HYDROCARBONS, WITHOUT COMPENSATION AND UNDER WORKERS CONTROL TO CREATE DECENT WORK AND LIVING WAGES FOR ALL THE UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE OF BOLIVIA!

The workers are employed by the cooperativistas bosses and exploited like slaves for 14 or 16 hour days. They must unite with their class brothers and sisters of Huanuni to recover their jobs, their lost labour rights and put the COMIBOL into the hands of the Bolivian workers.

Enough of union leaders of the COB, the COR and the peasant movement who collaborate with the regime to kill the workers!

Enough of the hollow phrases of solidarity that conceal the isolation that the treacherous union leaders have imposed on the heroic miners. The workers and peasant rank and file must join the fight alongside their comrades of Huanuni. But the leaders of the COB and the COD that support the class collaborationist bourgeois government of Morales hold back and weaken the organisation of the militant masses.

Empower once again the Headquarters of the Bolivian Revolution in Huanuni!

ELECT DELEGATES NOW OF ALL THE WORKERS AND PEASANTS ORGANIZATIONS IN STRUGGLE TO LEAD A NATIONAL FIGHT TO ENSURE THAT THE HEROIC DEFENCE OF THE MINERS IS VICTORIOUS

The demands of the heroic miners are those of all workers and poor peasants. Their victory will be a victory for all exploited people. The insurrection of El Alto rise up again and descend on La Paz to fight alongside its class brothers and sisters in the mines. With blockades, pickets and road blocks the miners can win in Huanuni.

LET US MAKE A NATIONAL GENERAL STRIKE NOW

Against the counter-revolutionary shock troops of Morales government and the employer's association, the junior partners of the transnational companies. Against the fascist bands armed by the Santa Cruzbourgeoisie that attack the poor peasants in broad daylight.

Get the army and police out of the workers’ fight!

They killed workers and farmers under the orders of Goni in the October days, and before that had entered the mines to kill under the orders of Banzer. The army and the police are prepared to enter once the the 1500 cooperativistas armed by Villarroel have defeated the miners and taken the mine.

Organize and to build self-defence organs like those of the miners of Huanuni in the whole labor movement and peasants movement.
Build workers and peasants militias to smash the counter-revolutionary gangs of Villarroel, the enslaving employer's association and the government of Morales, and the fascist bands of the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie in bed with Morales and the treacherous union leaders.

The international working class, and that of Latin America in particular, that fights back against the pro-imperialist bosses, the partners of the transnational companies in MERCOSUR; that in the Oaxaca commune heroically resists the election fraud and the Mexican FTA; that in Chile confronts the repression of the Bachelet government, the FTA and the pinochetista civic-military regime; the workers and the youth who fight against war in the United States; the oppressed in the Middle East who resist the forces of the Zionist-fascist state of Israel and fight in the trenches of Iraqian resistance; all internationalist workers must unite together to surround the heroic Bolivian workers and peasants so that their fight can win and become an enormous position of strength for the working class struggle at the world level.

Enough of the fraud and deceit of the Bolivariana Revolution! , of the pro-imperialist bourgeoisies, partners of the transnational companies in the sacking and the plundering of our countries, supported by the union bureaucracies and the treacherous leaders of the proletariat in the World Social Forum. In order to finish with the sacking, the plundering and the super-exploitastion the heroic Bolivian workers must win and make a revolution that can solve all the needs of the exploited masses.

FOR A WORKERS AND POOR PEASANTS’ REVOLUTION
THE LIBERATION OF WORKERS IS THE TASK OF WORKERS

Leninist Trotskyist Fraction (FLT)
Internationalist Red October (ORI) of Bolivia – Internationalist Workers’s Party (POI-CI) of Chile – Internationalist Workers League (LOI-CI) - Workers Democracy of Argentina – Communist Workers Group (CWG) of New Zealand – Trotskyist Fraction (FT) of Brazil – International Trotskyist League (LTI) of Peru