Bolivia: Arm the workers to smash the fascists!

Like October 2003 and May-June 2005, the working class and the poor farmers are rising up to regain the revolution that the bourgeoisie of Morales and Garcia Linera have stolen from us.

Long live the workers and peasants movement of Cochabamba!



No crawling to the government of Morales and its Constituent Assembly and autonomy referendums!

Down with Reyes Villa!

For a provisional government of the Workers and Peasants of the Cabildo (open town meeting)!

Disband the murderous police!

Build workers and peasants militias in Cochabamba now!

General arming of the workers and farmers now!

Build committees of soldiers who organize themselves in the workers and peasants Cabildo!

Throw out the class collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD and the COR!

All to Cochabamba: there let us create a national Congress of mandated delegates of the rank and file, of the COB, the COD and the poor peasants of Bolivia, and the revolutionary student movement!


The first year of Evo Morales government will be remembered for staining its hands in the blood of Bolivian workers and peasants in their struggle for land and water in Cochabamba.

On Thursday January 11 fascist gangs of the “Youth for Democracy”, armed with baseball bats, batons, pistols and gas grenades provided by the police, attacked thousands of farmers and workers who had rallied in Cochabamba to demand the resignation of of the prefect (governor) Manfred Reyes Villa, an ally of the former President Sanchez de Lozada (Goni) and today a leader of the fascist bourgeoisie of the Medialuna (the Tropical eastern part of Bolivia where most of oil and gas is found).

In a pitched battle that lasted more than two hours, the campesino comrade Nicomedes Gutiérrez was killed by the fascists. Many others were wounded. In the middle of the battle, the workers and peasants, in self-defense, lynched one of the fascist thugs of Reyes Villa.

In solidarity with the workers and peasants of Cochabamba, the exploited workers of El Alto marched in their thousands down to La Paz to surround the Hotel Europa where the prefects (Governors) of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Tarija and La Paz, who are demanding autonomy (the break up of Bolivia) including Reyes Villa, were meeting.

In spite of the calls by Morales to keep the peace and his appeal to the peasants of the six Federations of the Medialuna - the base of the MAS and Morales support - to respect the fact that Reyes Villa had been “democratically elected”, on Friday 12, in response to the call of the COD of Cochabamba (Departmental organisation of the Bolivian workers central), 20,000 workers and peasants held a huge open public rally in the Plaza de Armas and resolved to continue the fight until Reyes Villa was removed rom office.

Facing this rally, the class collaborationist government of Morales - the same one that last October called on the cooperativistas (self-employed miner bosses) to attack the militant unionised miners of Huanuni - did not miss a beat in ordering the police to ferociously repress the masses that occupy a TV channel supporting the governor.

It did not pause for a second before sending in the murderous army to Cochabamba. When the thousands of workers and peasants marched from El Alto to surround the Hotel Europa, Morales ordered his police to violently repress the demonstration.

Today, while our Cochabambinos brothers and sisters guard the fallen comrade and reaffirm their will to fight, the facist bands remain intact, Reyes Villa is still the prefect, though he has taken refuge with his fascist friends in Santa Cruz, and Morales continues to negotiate with PODEMOS (that is, with the organizers of the fascist gangs) over whether the Constituent Assembly will vote on the basis of a simple majority or two thirds majority.

But this repression has not stopped the continuous stream of contingents of workers and peasants arriving at the Plaza 14 of September in Cochabamba where they raise the cries of “Guns, shrapnel, the people will not be quiet” and “Resign or fall!”. In El Alto, the workers held a huge meeting on the 15th to demand the resignation of the prefect of La Paz begin to mobilize itself to throw to the prefect Paredes who supports Reyes Villa and the demand of “autonomy” made by the bourgeoisie.

In response to this, Morales has announced announced that he will introduce a law to hold a revocatory referendum (a vote to confirm or not the positions of the mayors and prefects). Reyes Villa supports the proposal, saying he can easily win such a referendum with the support of PODEMOS, but with the condition that Evo Morales subjects himself also to a revocatory referendum, in the expectation that the opposition can remove Morales from the presidency of the Constitutent Assembly and the Senate.

This new negotiation of Morals with the “autonomista” bourgeoisie of the Medialuna, is to make a new trap for the exploited masses, to force us off the streets of Cochabamba and La Paz, and to substitute the ballot boxes before we can overthrow the killer Reyes Villa and the "turncoat" Paredes.

Down with the trap of the “revocatory referendum”: the Bolivian workers and poor farmers in October of 2003 and June of 2005 already 'revoked' the mandates of the murderous presidents in throwing out Goni and Mesa!

Today we have already 'revoked' the mandates of the autonomist governors. While they were raised up by elections, we threw them down by our combat in the streets!


Stop the “reconciliation” of El Alto with the Santa Cruz fascist oligarchy!

Stop the “reconciliation” between the Rosca and Evo Morales being negotiated in the Constituent Assembly!

Stop the pacts made behind the backs of the people!

Stop making the workers and peasants the cannon fodder in the disputes between the fractions of the bourgeoisie over the distribution of the rent from the hydrocarbons and minerals!


It was the treachery of the workers leaders that made the workers kneel before the bourgeois government of Morales, that broke the unity between the workers and the poor peasants - won in the streets during May and June of 2005 to the demand of “Neither 30 nor 50%, [100%] nationalization” - and forced the peasant masses to bow before the national bourgeoisie.

Today, the class collaborationist government of Morales and the MAS in agreement with the national bourgeoisie whom they represent, threaten to destroy the historical organizations of Bolivian proletariat - the COB, the miners Federation, the COD and COR, etc. - statizing them and turning them into appendages of the bourgeois nationalist movement, to turn to Bolivia into a new Venezuela under Chávez where the working class is subordinated to the “Bolivarian president” and to the bourgeois state.

That is the treacherous result of the class collaboration of Montes leader of the COB, and the leaders of the CODs and CORs (Regional organisations of the COB) with Morales to destroy the independence of those organizations of workers struggle and subordinating them to the mayors and prefects.

The defenders of the popular front - in the 1930s Stalin, and today in Bolivia Garci'a Linera - always say that the weight of the working class aligned with the “progressive” bourgeoisie and the “patriotic” officers gives them an invincible power. Time and time again reality has destroyed that false claim, at the expense of the blood of the working class.

Today, Morales, Linera, Chávez, Castro, and Montes of the COB, try to yoke the two antagonistic classes of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie behind the plough of "Andean Capitalism”. The result is the neutralization of the power of the working class and the strengthening of the power of the bourgeoisie, now evident in the freedom of the fascists to mobilise on the streets and the officer caste to squash the revolutionary masses with fire and blood. That is exactly the role of the popular front: by adding the force of the working class to that of the bourgeoisie the result is zero, that is to say, the submission of the working class to the bourgeoisie, and its total powerlessness.

The Trotskyists of the FLT affirm, with Leon Trotsky, that the popular front does not unite the sum of class forces, but cancels out those forces. Trotsky said very well that if we are to reduce the operation of the popular front to a mathematical formula, it could not be the sum, but the law of the parallelogram of forces, where the result of two antagonistic forces, is zero.

The leaders of the workers and peasants have subordiated us to the fraction of the national bourgeoisie and have expropriated the workers and peasants revolution to serve the interests of the oligarchy and the Rosca

Of February to October of 2003, the Bolivian workers and poor peasantgs rose up against the hated US client regime of Goni (Sanchez de Lozada), the MNR (party of the Revolutionary National Militia), of Banzerismo (regime of the former military dictator General Banzer) and the MIR. More than 100 comrades gave their lives in the battle to bring down the murderous Goni.

But conspiring against the masses, in October 2003, Morales, Quispe and Solares of the COB told us that Carlos Mesa (Goni's vice-President) was the solution. They are the people who are responsible for stopping and containing the workers and peasants revolution that was underway which raised as its program the demands of the vast majorityof Bolivian workers and peasants: “Out with the foreigners!”, “Out with the transnational companies!”, “ Neither 30% nor 50%, nationalization [of the hydrocarbons]! ”, "land to the peasants", etc.

Mesa was not slow to show what he was: while he tried to deceive us and stop the struggle with a few concessions, he proved he was just like Goni and the Rosca (mine-owners oligarchy) conspiring with them to defeat the workers and the poor peasants. In May andJune of 2005, in spite of the desertion of the leaders of the COB to the side of the regime - Solares and his allies managed to dominate the formation of the 'headquarters' of the struggle in El Alto. We blocked the roads, we surrounded centers of the exploiters power and took over the streets to demand our solution: a a popular, workers and peasants assembly to represent all the poor exploited masses of Bolivia.

Against the fascist bands of Santa Cruz, the mercenaries of the large estate owners and oil companies, the El Alto 'headquarters' put out the call to form workers and peasants militias. Against the officers caste in the army, we demanded that those who killed workers, and soldiers who refused to shoot the people during October, be tried and punished.

But the exploiters cornered in Sucre made a deal with Morales behind the back of the people to replace Morales with Rodriguez and call for new elections. In this way they banished the 'demons' that had appeared - the 'demons' being the hungry workers, peasants and destitute who are the big majority of the Bolivian people who had risen up against the small minority of corrupt, exploitative and murderous, national oligarchy.

There, in Sucre, between midnight and dawn, the exploiters found the solution to the threat to their power in the "pact of the two cities”, of El Alto and Santa Cruz. That infamous pact agreed to a rigged, elitist Constituent Assembly without no participation of the big majority of the workers and peasants, and to the autonomy referendum.

The class collaborationist leaders of the COR and the COD, called for a vote for Morales as the “lesser evil" and supporting the MAS openly in the elections. They sabotaged the revolutionary headquarters of El Alto, and diverted the workers into the pact for the CA and autonomy referendums with the new Rosca regime. At the same time they sacrificed the peasants movement to the national bourgeoisie of Morales, and Garcia Linera - that agent of the Totalfina and French imperialism.

Those leaders are responsible for stealing the workers and peasants revolutionary uprising. They are the ones who subordianted the workers and peasants to the national bourgeoisie. They are the ones who sabotaged our demands and allowed the regime, weakened and defensive, to survive by the farce of the Constituent Assembly and the autonomy referendum agreed to by Morales and PODEMOS.

They are people responsible in the last instance, for the treacherous pact of the CA and autonomy, and for the survival of the 'gonistas' like Reyes Villa, the oligarchy of the Medialuna, and the rotten corpses of the MNR, the MIR and Banzerismo - that is, all the bosses parties of the Rosca regime that was facing overthrow in October of 2003 and May-June of 2005, which today go on the offensive with their fascist gangs to kill the workers and poor peasants.

Down with the pact of Morales with the Rosca, its Constituent Assembly and its autonomy referendums!

This pact has the purpose of protecting the class interests of the national bourgeoisie, in particular the cruceña oligarchy and the transnational companies. It guarantees the continued plunder of the hydrocarbons, the superprofits of the oil monopolies, and a larger share being siphoned off by the national bourgeoisie. That is why the 'nationalization' of Morales was a fraud as it allowed the oil companies, and their 'junior partners' the national bourgeoisie, to make 'join ventures' with the state and to continue to make huge superprofits by robbing the hydrocarbon wealth that the Bolivian workers and farmers demanded for themselves in the struggle for “Neither 30% nor 50%, nationalization of hydrocarbons”.

The result: enormous profits for the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisie, while the poor workers and peasants continue paying for expensive fuel to cook, or suffer the cold because they cannot afford to pay for the trillones of cubic meters of gas under their feet to warm themselves.

This infamous pact between Morales, the Rosca and the transnationals, now being implemented in the CA, treats the masses as cannon fodder in the disputes between the national bosses and the imperialist monopolies over the distribution of the enormous mining wealth of the Mutún; it gives more state subsidies to business such as the cooperativistas bosses who were behind the attack on the miners of Huanuni under instructions from the former cooperativista minister of mines Villarroel and his supporters, and with the approval of Morales.

The pact is behind the fraudulent “agrarian reform” that redistributes only patches of unproductive land and the deserts of the Plateau to the landless peasants, while 87% of the fertile and cultivable land remains in the hands of a tiny number of landowners who defend their property with armed fascist gangs in the Medialuna. It means a limit to the holdings of family farmers to 1600 square meters for the cultivation of coca, the promise to continue the US “Coca eradication plan”, the murder of two coca farmers who defended their crops, and renewed pacts with Yankee imperialism to allow it to build bigger army bases and station more DEA troops in the Yungas and Chapare.

The conflicts over this pact being fought out today among the different fractions of the national bourgeoisie over the division of the spoils of Bolivia's wealth, mean that the comuneros of Ayo Ayo are still in jail, the killers of over 100 workers and peasants in October 2005 are still free, along with the murderers of the homeless workers, the miners of Huanuni, and the coca growers, all of whose blood stains the hands of Morales government.

So while the bosses fight over a two thirds or a simple majority in the CA; while they fight over the degree of autonomy for the departments; that is, while the different bourgeois fractions fight over their shares in the booty of the hydrocarbons, minerals and the national rent, the poor workers and peasants continue to shed their blood as the currency in the deals made to advance business at the expense of the people. However, because they fear the return of the "demons" (i.e. the insurgent workers and peasants) the bosses will agree that to prevent the fall of Reyes Villa and the Rosca regime, they will call on Morales to impose a 'national' solution to protect their property and oil profits, as always, at the expense of the needs and the lives of the poor workers and peasants of Bolivia.

The overall result of this infamous pact of “pacification” and “reconciliation” between the conspiring leaders of the COB, the COR of El Alto and the farmers organisations, and the killer fascist bourgeoisie of Santa Cruz, is the stealing of the workers and peasants revolution that had begun in 2003. This is the "Bolivarian Revolution” that Morales, Chávez, Fidel Castro and their friends want to sell to us: full pockets for imperialism and the bourgeoisie; hunger, slavery and repression for the poor workers and peasants. Now Chávez has announced, like Morales, “nationalizations” of the telephones and electricity in Venezuela, that will end up as 'joint ventures' with the imperialist monopolies, while 60% of the workers and poor people continue living in misery! Now the Cuban Castroite bureaucracy - another key proponent of the “Bolivaria Revolution” - is negotiating with the Yankees to set up joint ventures to complete the restoration of capitalism on the island, and transforming itself into national bourgeoisie!

Now Sandinista ex-“commander" Ortega in Nicaragua - whose election to the presidency has been warmly embraced by Morales and Chávez - has formed an alliance with the ex-assassins of the 'somocistas' and the 'Contras' armed by the CIA, and guarantees to protect the continuity of the FTA that enslaves the nation to imperialism!

This is the famous "Bolivarian Revolution”: the expropriation of the workers and peasants revolution. This is the main objective of the class collaborationist bourgeois government of Evo Morales. To achieve that aim, imperialism, the transnationals and the Rosca conspired to deceive the workers by making the pact with the fraction of Evo Morales [representing the rich coca growers] as the representative of the whole national bourgeoisie. Now that this objective has been fulfilled, and the masses have been subordinated to one fraction of the bourgeoisie, and the workers and peasants organisations betrayed by their leaders to the state, the Rosca - representing of the transnational companies and the oligarchy of the Medialuna - wants to assume its traditional role as the leading fraction of the national bourgeoisie that controls the state. They no longer need Morales or his Chavista and Castroist allies. Now the Rosca wants to mobilise all its power and its property to smash the remaining life out of the workers and peasants revolution. For that reason today it is organising its forces and its fascist gangs to prepare to drown the last vestige of the revolution in a blood bath.

That is the treacherous role of the popular front and the politics of class collaboration of the leaders of the COB today into the hands of Montes, the friend of Morales, who keeps quiet while our comrades are attacked and killed in Cochabamba. It subordinates the working class to a fraction of the bourgeoisie, to destroy its independent organizations of struggle, to deceive the masses with sweet phrases and token concessions to buy the time to allow the fifth column to attack the revolutionary vanguard as they did in Huanuni, and to allow the imperialists and the “autonomist” bourgeoisie to mobilise their fascist bands and the officer caste to prepare the armed forces to smash the revolution, and to break-up Bolivia if necessary.

The collaborationist leaders of the COB and the COR are responsible for usurping the historic program of the Bolivian workers: "the liberation of the workers will be work of the workers”. They want us to think that the national bosses are our allies, when in reality they are the agents and junior partners of the imperialist monopolies and share in the superexploitation of Bolivian workers and poor peasants. They want to convince us that we should support the "patriotic” generals and "progressive” bourgeois.

But the workers and poor peasants of Bolivia already know from experience that we pay in blood for our support of the bourgeoisie. We learned that tragic lesson in the huge revolution which began in 1952, in supporting the "progressive” government of the MNR [Revolutionary National Militia] that stole our revolution and ended in a military coup that massacred the miners vanguard by shelling the mines. We learned that tragic lesson of the Popular Assembly of 1971, when the treacherous leaders told us to support the "anti-imperialist” and “socialist” general Torrez, only to end up under the heel of Banzer's bloodthirsty military coup which smashed our revolutionary uprising.

For that reason, so that our class brothers and sisters win the battle in Cochabamba, and that in Cochabamba, Huanuni and El Alto we revive the revolutionary struggle that has been stolen, the most urgent task now is to break our workers and peasant organisations from the bourgeoisie and the new treacherous Rosca regime based on the pact between Morales, the national bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie of the Medialuna, and the transnational companies.

We have to fight to regain rank and file control of the COB and the COD with our slogan: "the liberation of the workers will be work of the workers”. We have to return to the Theses from Pulacayo, the program of the heroic Bolivian revolution of 1952! That program proves that we have to rebuild the worker-peasant alliance, because the only class that can break with imperialism, solve the land question and end the misery of the poor peasants by expropriating the landowning class and the banks to finance the development of agriculture, and provide bread and work for all who want to work, is the working class leading the poor farmers in a socialist revolution.

Reforge the worker-peasant alliance, led by the COB, the COD and the COR, organizing the poor and landless peasants, united with the revolutionary student movement - as we did it in October 2003 and May-June 2005 - the only way to end the imperialist plunder of our nation and solve the needs of the exploited people, creating a revolutionary workers and peasants government to finish the revolution begun more than three years ago!



They continue to rob our hydrocarbons, our minerals and our land from us: we will not allow them to rob our revolution from us!

End the blood of the workers and peasants spilled in the service of the different gangs of the Bolivian bourgeoisie and transnational companies!

Out with Reyes Villa!

For a Provisional Government of the workers and farmers organizations of Cochabamba, based on the committees of self-defense of the armed masses!

Using the popular front of Morales, Garcia Linera and the prattling politicians of the MAS, the supporters of Goni and Rosca have staged their return. The bourgeois press in Bolivia, alarmed by the angry disputes between the different bourgeois fractions for the control the Bolivian state, speaks of a “war of positions”, fearing that because of these divisions, the "demons" of the insurgent workers and peasants can stage their return.

The Morales government calls on the "autonomist” bourgeoisie to negotiate and invites the priests, the NGOs and the Human Rights commissions that always appear after the workers and farmers have been killed, to stop us from making our own justice against the fascist bands of the Rosca.

The old Rosca controls four departments of the Medialuna, and two prefectures in La Paz and Cochabamba. The new coca and national bourgeoisie of Morales and Garci'a Linera, have the majority in the CA and control the central state power.

Morales role, as representative of the national bourgeoisie (those who pocket the rent of the hydrocarbons and the businesses of the Bolivian state) is to take charge of the workers and peasants to prevent us from developing the struggle for our basic demands and take back the dual power that we created in in 2003 and 2005. They are the ones in charge of throwing water on the fire of the revolution.

At the same time the old oligarchy of the Rosca has used the pact of the CA and the antonomies, to mobilize its fascist bands of “rich children”, plain clothes police and the mercenaries of the large estate owners, to prepare the armed defence of its property and its interests. This is the “war of positions” of which the Bolivian bourgeois press speaks: it is the workers and farmers, fighting and dying in the service of one or other fraction of the Bolivian bourgeoisie.


Enough! The poor workers and peasants are not the cannon fodder for any business of the exploiters!

In Cochabamba, like yesterday in Huanuni, they tied our hands to stop us from fighting back. The government of Morals defends the pact with Rosca: it wants to keep the fascist assassin Manfred Reyes Villa in the power. In that “war of positions” for the biggest shares in the spoils of the plunder of the Bolivian nation and the exploitation of the workers and peasants, not one more oppressed person must die!

Like yesterday in Huanuni, today in Cochabamba the class struggle is on the streets: we want to fight, and to die if it is necessary, for the wages, hydrocarbons, minerals, and land that belongs to us, the workers and peasants.

And in this war of classes, on the other side of the barricade there are the fascist bands massacreing workers and peasants, supported by the Rosca, and the government of Morals and his gang of native bourgeois, in dispute with them over minor business differences, but in fundamental agreement that the people must be suppressed before them threaten the property of the whole national bourgeoisie.


Long live the Cabildo of the workers and peasants of Cochabamba!
No submission to the government of Morales and its pact of the CA and the regional autonomies!
Down with Reyes Villa!
For a Provisional Workers and Peasants Government of the Cabildo!
Disband the killer police!
Militias and generalized arming of the workers and peasants of Cochabamba!
Create soldiers committees to organize as part of the workers and peasants Cabildo!


Let us revive, in Cochabamba, the headquarters of the workers and peasants revolution so that we can eat, have land and end the imperialist plunder of our nation!

Enough of the collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD and the COR!
All to Cochabamba: let us found a national Congress of mandated delegates of the rank and file, of the COB, the COD and the poor peasants of Bolivia, along with the revolutionary student movement!


In October, the heroic miners of Huanuni who resisted the counterrevolutionary attack of Villarroel and the cooperativistas encouraged by Morales, had their heroic struggle isolated and contained. It was clear that the leadership of the COB, in the hands of Montes, did not lift a finger for the fight of the Bolivian workers. The job of those union bureaucrats is to prevent the Bolivian working class, led by its heroic miners, from re-entering the road to revolution.

In order to smash the fascist gangs of Santa Cruz, the Medialuna and Cochabamba, it is necessary to create workers and peasants militias. To create these militias it is necessary to throw out the collaborationist leaders of the Miners Federation and elect a new leadership mandated by the base (rank and file). The “rich children” and the mercenaries of the bloody fascist gangs that kill the workers and peasants in the interests o the Rosca oligarchy, deserve to be taught a lesson with the dynamite sticks of the miners.

For a National Congress of the Miners Federation in Cochabamba, led by the heroic wage-earning miners of Huanuni, alongside the Open Cabildo of the exploited cochabambinos! For mandated delegates for each 50 workers of the workshops of La Paz and Cochabamba!

What Cochabamba needs is that and workers of El Alto, throwing off the COR and their collaborationist leaders and mount a fight against the La Paz prefect Patana who sold out to Morales and the national bourgeoisie for a plate of lentils, and re-create in El Alto the 'headquarters' the revolution and the program of the 8 of June of 2005. That program, after the overthrow of Mesa, called for a "national, indigenous Popular Assembly as an instrument of national power" based on elected delegates of assemblies of workers, with self-defence committees, planned an indefinite general strike and a national road blockade for the "nationalization and industrialization of hydrocarbons”. It also rejected “all the bourgeois traps of constitutional succession and new elections". What Cochabamba needs is that it takes as its model the militant slogan of the alteños [people of El Alto] : “We are the guardians of the hydrocarbons; we are the communitarian Wipala, we are the indomitable El Alto”!


Enough of begging to the rigged CA to meet the needs of the exploited!

The CA serves the businesses and the profits of the Rosca, the transnational companies and the national bourgeoisie represented by the MAS, robber of our revolution, and only chains the workers doubly to the slavery and misery of the national and imperialist bourgeoisies!

From Cochabamba, we will create a great congress and national peasants, uniting all the organizations of the poor peasants, and led by the Cabildo of the Cochabamba workers and the Miners Federation, with delegates of base of the COB, the COD, together with the revolutionary student movement which is fighting alongside the workers and farmers against the fascist thugs of Reyes Villa.

For the revolutionary overthrow of Manfred Reyes Villa!
For a workers and peasants government in Cochabamba!

Against the war of positions of the fractions of the exploiters; against the infamous pact of the CA and the autonomies, we counter-pose the workers and Cochabamba peasant government for whom the revival of the class war in Bolivia will deliver justice, end the large estates and give land to the peasants, mines to the miners, worthy work and wages to the workers, and the hydrocarbons to the Bolivian people, and stop the transnational companies plunder of the nation.

Against the collaborationist leadership of Montes, Patana and others, that subordinates the workers organizations to the bourgeoisie, we must reclaim the COB and the COR for the base, and restore the workers and peasants alliance to revive the fight for land, bread and national independence

From democratic assemblies of the bases, it is necessary to defeat the collaborationist leaders of the COB, COD and COR, replacing them with the leaders of the militant rank and file. On this question the Theses of Pulacayo speak clearly, saying that the workers will never support the bourgeois, no matter how disguised as “progressives” or “anti-imperialists” they appear.


We must reclaim our COB, our COD and COR!

Kick out of our organizations all those collaborationists like Montes, the servants of the national bourgeoisie that provide a cover for the old oligarchy by supporting a new MAS oligarchy, that rises out of the bowels of the old to drown the revolution in blood!


The working class requires a revolutionary leadership to once more win the streets for the poor landless farmers, demonstrating to them its capacity to fight, and to win - that is to say, that it has the power to make a revolution to provide its class allies with its most pressing needs for land, cheap credit, tractors, electricity, and a worthy standard of living.

The peasants of the tropics, the Yungas, all over Bolivia, need land; down with the fraudulent "agrarian reform” of Morales and Garcia Linera, negotiated in the United States with Bush and the DEA, and agreed with the oligarchy of Santa Cruz! Out with the DEA!

The oligarchy, with its shout of “autonomy”, defends it's 87% of that productive land in Bolivia that it has robbed. Morales and the CA have shown that it doesnt want to touch a single hectare of the parasitic oligarchy of the Medialuna. We counterpose nationalisation now of the territories of the Medialuna oligarchy and to redistribute the land to the poor peasants that wants to work the land, and to transform them into cooperatives and communes, with the state guaranteeing finance, electricity, machinery, tractors, fertilizers, etc.! In order to defeat the “autonomistas” and the Rosca, it is necessary to expropriate the land of the oligarchy and to give it to the poor peasants and the destitute.

It is necessary to expropriate the banks without compensation, and nationalize the banks under the control of the workers, creating a single state bank, to put an end to the usury of the bankers who takes the land from endebted peasants and creates large estates for the rich, so as to provide cheap credit for our campesino brothers and sisters.

It is necessary also to expropriate the parasitic commercial bourgeoisie - of which Evo Morales is a faithful representative - who pays a cruelly low price to buy commodities from the peasant, and sells them for an exorbitant price to the workers and the people of the cities, or on the world market.


Out with the transnational companies from Bolivia!

Down with all the agreements of co-participation for the rent of hydrocarbons with Respol, Totalfina, Petrobras, British Petroleum and other new allies of Morales!

Use Bolivia's resources and funds for public works to guarantee high standard houses and provide free gas to all workers and peasants homes in Bolivia!

For the nationalization without compensation of the Mutún mine and all the mineral wealth under the control of the Miners Federation (FSTMB) and the COB!

Immediate Increase of wages for all the Bolivian workers, with a minimum wage at the level of the family shopping basket and indexed according to the cost of living!

Divide the working hours among all those who want to work including the unemployed!

Down with the plan of Morales to eliminate university freedom, that is already creating a new Rosca bourgeois in the universities!

Total university autonomy! Education neither for the Rosca, nor for the national bourgeoisie: tripartite government with a student majority in all the universities of Bolivia, to make the university serve the needs of the revolutionary workers and peasants, the demand raised by the red students of the UTO of Oruro!


We have already proved that none of these measures will come from that infamous pact of the rigged CA and the autonomies. Nor will it introduce any measures against the officer caste of the army, the murderous of the workers and peasants of Bolivia.

The hour has arrived to converge on the workers and farmers Cabildo at Cochabamba, and to hold a session there to convene a great national congress of the Miners Federation, the COB and all COD and COR, with delegates of the base.

Immediate formation of national workers and peasants militias independent of Morales and his government and all its supporters, to smash the fascist gangs of the Medialuna and the prefects of Rosca

The oligarchy and the Rosca are armed to the teeth. They have organized their fascist militias and they have recruited openly to these counter-revolutionary shock troops. The Cabildo of workers and peasants of Cochabamba, where the delegates of all the workers and peasants organizations of Bolivia meet, has a million times more legitimacy than those pacts that arm and disarm made by the Rosca and Morales behind the backs of the people in the CA, to organise workers and peasants militias, and to call on the rank and file soldiers to form committees to send their delegates to a true National Assembly, of workers, peasants and indigenous people of Bolivia, representating the massive majority of our nation. Thus we will finally bring to justice the murderous officer caste of the Armed Forces, today free and unpunished thanks to the impunity and pardon that Morales government has provided them.

It is necessary to smash the fascist bands of Reyes Villa in Cochabamba; it is necessary to enlist now at El Alto and in the Miners Federation all those workers and poor peasants who are prepared to fight for the defense of their cochabambinos brothers and sisters, and for their own class interests.

Every minute, and hour of every day, workers and peasants are suffering the blows of the fascist thugs of Medialuna. Enough! For a national military command of all workers and peasants organizations, centralized by the COB, the Miners Federation and the Cabildo of Cochabamba, to settle accounts with Reyes Villa and his thugs and to smash the fascist gangs of Santa Cruz! With the fascists we do not discuss: with the fascists we fight! But for to do this, the workers and peasants organizations have to break with Morales and his policy of using the police and military to defend us from the fascists. On the contrary, it is the police that provides the fascists with arms and gas grenades so that they can kill the workers and poor peasants, and that in October armed the cooperativistas to kill the miners of Huanuni.

The facists recruit their thugs publicly to defend the interests of a handful of oligarchs and expropiators of the people. The slower the workers and peasants organizations are to break with the bourgeois government of Morals and the pacts of the CA and the autonomies, the more will the Bolivian earth be irrigated with the blood of the miners, workers and poor peasants. The more time we take to build the centralized national military command of the workers and farmers organizations, the faster will the officer caste mobilize the Armed Forces to drown the revolution the heroic workers and peasants, begun in October 2003, in a blood bath. For military commands in all the miners, workers and peasants organizations in Boliviak, centralised in the Cabildo of the COD and the peasants of the region of Cochabamba!


Only a Workers' and Peasants Government, supported by the militias of the armed masses and by soldiers committees, will be able to guarantee national liberation, agrarian revolution and the bread and work for the workers

In the pact of “reconciliation” of El Alto and Santa Cruz, made by Morales and the collaborative leaders of the COR of El Alto and the church, it was the workers and poor farmers who had to yield and to drop their demands. In the rigged, undemocratic CA, the deputies of PODEMOS - representing the of cruceña and Medialuna bourgeoisie - were armed to the teeth, and openly recruiting for their fascist bands. Today some of the allies of Morales like the prefect of La Paz, Paredes, and some of the deputies of the MAS, have switched sides and oppose the simple majority in the CA. But whether for or against a simple majority, everything is decided by 250 deputies of PODEMOS and the MAS, behind the backs of the people.

Everything is decided behind the backs of the big majority of the people, mainly the poor workers and peasants. The collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD, and COR and the peasants organizations have forced the fighting organizations that overthrew Goni and Mesa, to beg before the CA where none of the problems of the poor and oppressed people can be resolved, and where they are used as cannon fodder in the disputes between the different bourgeois fractions.

The only true democracy of the working class and the poor farmers is the workers democracy of the organizations of the masses in struggle, where we decide how to take into our own hands the resolution of all our problems! But the collaborationist leaders were determined to wreck any independence won by our militant organisations, to neutralize and force them to kneel to the prefectures and to the government of Morales, so that we were made to give up our power to decide our future to these gangs who conspire against the people in the rigged CA.

The pact between Morales and the bourgeoisie of the Rosca and the Medialuna, has left the real power with the transnational companies, whose General Staffs and directors, with a handful of national parasites, decide behind closed doors the destiny of Bolivia. A very small minority of directors of the transnational companies, bourgeois and oligarchs of the Medialuna, bosses politicians of MNR, the MIR and the banzerismo today re-united in PODEMOS, deputies of the MAS in the CA, Evo Morales and the Garci'as Linera, they are a true band of conspirators against the people.

Morales, with the collaborationist leaders of the COB, the COD and other workers organizations, are following exactly the “advice” of Fidel Castro. In the same way that he told the workers and peasants who in the1980s rose up, overthrew Somoza and started a revolution, that they did not have to be the new Cuba, today Fidel told Evo Morales not to make the 'errors' of Cuba, that is, not to expropriate the bourgeoisie, but on the contrary to make only a 'democratic' revolution. What is this “democratic revolution”? A handful of bloodsuckers plundering the nation and exploiting the workers and poor peasants, conspiring behind the backs of the people in the offices of the transnational companies, the imperialist embassies and the corridors of the rigged CA, to decide the destiny of Bolivia!

It could not be any other way. The CA of the pact between Morales and the MAS and the PODEMOS, cannot with a simple majority or two third majority break with imperialism, expropriate the landowners and give the land to the peasants, nor give bread and work to the workers, nor anything. This has been absolutely proven already. The only thing that the CA had done is to strengthen the Rosca so that is can begin to mobilise its power once more, and to bring about a deeper defeat for the workers and peasants.

In Bolivia, as in all semi-colonial nations, the true democratic-revolutionary tasks are the break from imperialism to win national independence, and the agrarian revolution. The gutless Bolivian national bourgeoisie of the “Andean Capitalism” which Garcia Linera speaks of, junior partner of imperialism, is absolutely incapable of solving these democratic objectives because it is intrinsically tied, by thousands of business interests, to the imperialist transnational companies. It can haggle and discuss its share of these businesses, but like the exploiting class that it is, it will never touch the property of the transnational companies. Only the working class, the one truly national class, which has no interest in any ties to imperialism, can break these chains, and lead the poor peasants and all other oppressed people in the nation to the complete realisation of those democratic tasks as part of a socialist revolution.

Only a provisional workers and peasants revolutionary government, with a victorious insurrection that overthrows the Rosca, destroys to officer caste of the armed forces, and expropriates the expropiators, can break with imperialism and win national independence, solve the agrarian problem by expropriating the landowners and redistributing the land to the poor peasants and landless, guarantee worthy work and living wages for all the workers, reclaim the hydrocarbons, minerals and all the natural resources of the nation, and resolve the problems of the vast majority of the oppressed people.


The national bourgeoisie, junior partner of imperialism, has demonstrated that it cannot even give to the peasants the equal right to vote in a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly. It cannot allow a truly free and sovereign bourgeois democratic institution, because, as soon as it acted in the interests of the huge majority of the people against the interests and the property of the imperialist transnationals and of its junior partners the national bourgeoisie, the exploiters would use the officer caste and fascist gangs to dissolve the CA and repress any threat to their continued class rule.

For that reason, there can be no free and sovereign democratic Constituent Assembly without at the same time creating soldiers committees and arming the people, to smash the fascist gangs, disband the police, destroy the officer caste, that is to say, form a government of the poor workers and peasants who are the vast majority of the people.

The proletariat must say to the peasants to convince them of their true numerical strength, that it they really want a truely democratic and sovereign CA, the best way is to create workers and peasants militias to smash the fascists. We must explain clearly to our peasant brothers and sisters that only a provisional government of the revolutionary workers and peasants supported by the armed organisations of the masses, can dissolve the police, destroy the officer caste and allow a truly free and sovereign national CA, with one deputy elected for each 10,000 people for the whole country, recallable at any time, paid no more than a workers wage, where they can discuss democratically how to break with imperialism, expropriate the landowners and distribute the land to the peasants etc.

At the same time, we must say to them clearly that a Workers and Peasants Republic - that is to say, the dictatorship of proletariat - would be a million times more democratic than any bourgeois republic with most democratic of Constituent Assemblies, that in fact no more than the dictatorship of a handful of exploiters of the vast majority of the exploited and oppressed Bolivian people.


A Workers Socialist Revolution, or a caricature of "revolution" called "chavista" and “bolivarian”.
The internationalist Trotskyists of the ORI: standing up alongside the heroic revolt of the workers and peasants of Cochabamba

As in Huanuni in October, today the cochabambinos class brothers and sisters are putting up a revolutionary fight. It is clear that in Bolivia today the historical alternative is between communism or fascism. Like successive pre-shocks, these confrontations herald the coming events in Bolivia, either a counter-revolutionary pact in the CA between Morales, as the representative of the national bourgeoisie, and the oligarchy of the Medialuna, that finishes off the last vestiges of the revolution; or the popular front throwing water on the fire of the masses struggle, allows the Rosca to mobilise its fascist gangs and the officer caste to go on the offensive, and the heroic revolution of the workers and peasants that began in 2003 is drowned in blood.

This danger becomes more serious every minute, because the Bolivian masses do not have at their head the leadership they need and deserve. The crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletariat becomes more serious each day. The renegades of Trotskyism like the POR-Lora, the LOR-CI, the mst (ex- LIT-CI), working with the conciliationist leaders of the COB and other organizations, have collaborated decisively in liquidating the leadership of the working class allowing those who collaborate with Morales such as Montes, Patana and others to steal the revolution. They are part of the treacherous popular front bloc that is the World Social Forum, renouncing the 4th International founded in 1938 and its program the Theses of Pulacayo that was adopted by the Bolivian miners in 1946 and which guided the revolution of 1952.

Today, more than ever, the Bolivian proletariat needs a revolutionary leadership. The internationalist Trotskyists of the ORI, members of the FLT, are a nucleus that has yet to win the authority to lead the exploited masses, but we are fighting alongside them because we want to convince the masses of the correctness of the strategy and program of Trotskyism as part of our shared experience.


But the decisive combats and confrontations which will determine the outcome of events in Bolivia are already here. There is a race to see if the heroic Bolivian proletariat can equip itself with the revolutionary leadership it needs and deserves to resolve the decisive confrontations in the heat of battle. The elements needed to create the General Staff of the revolution exist in the mines of Huanuni, the factories and the streets of the indomitable El Alto, in the revolt of the cochabambinos workers and peasants, and in the revolutionary struggles of the students of Oruro, El Alto, and Cochabamba; and in the thousands of workers who have been educated for generations by the program of Trotskyism adopted by the Bolivian working class in the Theses of Pulacayo.

As the conditions that will allow the revolutionary General Staff to form are developing, all the forces of the ORI, a member of the FLT, are being thrown into the fight to recover the COB, COD and COR as organisations of the base, as well as the organizations of the poor and landless peasants, as organs that can go from the defensive onto the offensive in Cochabamba, El Alto, and Huanuni, so that those struggles can win and re-open the road to the revolution that has been stolen by the Morales popular front.

We put all our forces into the fight to rebuild, generalize, and centralize at the national level, so that the armed organs of working class self-determination and direct democracy of the masses can prevail. Because there, in those organs, under the vigilant eyes of the masses, every day the policy and the programs are subject to the workers and peasants votes to see if they work to defend their class interests. And because of this, their experience in these organs allows the workers and poor peasants to quickly learn how to deal with their treacherous leaders, how to get rid of them, and how to judge the correctness of the program of the revolutionaries.

In those organs, a small nucleus of internationalist revolutionaries can multiply its forces by thousands, on condition that it fights implacably against all the conciliationist leaders, speaks the truth to the masses no matter how difficult, and points out clearly, at each step, who are their allies, and who are their enemies.

We revolutionaries of the ORI, members of the FLT, have already chosen our trench in the combat: standing up next to the heroic uprising of the exploited people of Cochabamba! Standing up next to the miners of Huanuni and next to the revolutionary workers of El Alto! That is our place: we only ask for a position in the front rank of the fight, and the possibility of honestly fighting to convince the workers and the youth of the correctness of the program and strategy of revolutionary Trotskyism.

16 de Enero de 2007

Octubre Rojo Internacionalista (ORI) de Bolivia

Partido Obrero Internacionalista (CI) de Chile
Grupo de Obreros Comunistas (CWG) de Nueva Zelanda
Fracción Trotskista (Vanguardia Proletaria) de Brasil
Liga Trotskista Internacionalista (LTI) de Perú
Liga Obrera Internacionalista (CI)-Democracia Obrera de Argentina

Integrantes de la Fracción Leninista Trotskista