Bolivian president Resigns in Face of Protests

hooray for the revolutionary spirit of the Bolivarians!! this is an incredible moment in history....if they can do it with their water, they can do it with their gas resources. Come on NZers, lets give the the Bolivarians all the support we can. Good riddance to the multinationals!

Revolt in Bolivia has come from the grassroots

The Bolivian rebellion is the latest uprising to hit the region. The Latin American version of “regime change” is proving a major headache for the US, the multinationals keen to exploit the region’s resources and their allies in the region’s ruling classes.

Mass movements have brought down unpopular governments in Argentina in 2001, Bolivia in 2003 and Ecuador in 2000 and again earlier this year. Ecuador and Bolivia were among the countries where, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice told the Organisation of American States (OAS), “the institutions of democracy have brittle roots”.

She also used her speech to attack Venezuela’s government led by Hugo Chavez. “We must insist that leaders who are elected democratically have a responsibility to govern democratically,” she said.

Rice planned to go from the OAS meeting to meet with Venezuelan exiles who want to overthrow Chavez.

Far from being an authoritarian figure, Chavez has been elected twice. His policy of using Venezuela’s oil wealth to pay for ambitious social programmes has made him one of the most popular leaders in the region.

Many Bolivians want to see this model adopted in their country, which, after Venezuela, has the biggest natural gas reserves in the continent. Western multinationals, including BP and British Gas, have made huge profits from Bolivian oil and gas since the energy industry was privatised under IMF pressure in 1996.

Two thirds of the Bolivian population live in poverty.

Protesters have also taken up rights for Indians who make up about 62 percent of Bolivia’s population, and who suffer disproportionately from poverty. But the Bolivian elite, and the multinationals who profit from the gas, are making demands of their own.

They have organised a referendum calling for autonomy for the gas rich regions of the south and east—including the wealthy city of Santa Cruz where most of Bolivia’s elite live.

In the parliamentary debate on the natural gas laws president Mesa opposed the new legislation because he did not even want to increase the taxes paid on gas exports.

Before becoming president, Mesa served in the US-backed government of Sanchez Lozada.

Lozada was overthrown in October 2003 after pushing neo-liberal measures.

In 2003 Mesa promised to nationalise the gas, enshrine the rights of Indians in a new constitution and put on trial those responsible for 67 deaths in the uprising against Lozada.

But Mesa continued to push a neo-liberal agenda and has faced more protests than he has had days in office.

The coca farmers’ leader, Evo Morales, who narrowly lost the last presidential election in 2002, ought to be the main beneficiary of the latest wave of struggle in Bolivia.

But Morales is barely keeping pace with the movement, and has tried to keep the movement within narrow constitutional channels.

The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), which he leads, has not demanded the nationalisation of gas reserves.

In the radical US newsletter Counterpunch, Forrest Hylton writes, “Morales functions as a dam against a popular flood onto the nation’s highways, into its streets and perhaps even the presidential palace.

“The motive force of the current wave of protest comes from the rank and file and mid-level cadre.” Morales played a key role in defusing the 2003 protests, allowing Mesa to assume power.

Bolivian uprising rocks the elite
by Joseph Choonara

Four weeks of strikes, protests and blockades have thrown the South American state of Bolivia into turmoil, and forced president Carlos Mesa to offer his resignation.

But Bolivia’s grassroots protest movement is unlikely to receive the kind of support George Bush offers to those demanding the US version of democracy elsewhere in the world.

Successive Bolivian governments have driven through unpopular neo-liberal measures — a status quo that the US would like to see restored.

Speaking at the meeting of the Organisation of American States (OAS) last Sunday, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice singled out Bolivia as a country that needed to “overcome its instability”.

Addressing the OAS on Monday of this week, Bush explicitly linked the imposition of neo-liberalism and democracy.

But in Bolivia it is neo-liberal measures — felt by most Bolivians to run against their interests and democratic wishes—that have sparked the mass protests.

The recent wave of struggle began in mid-May when Bolivia’s congress approved a new law governing the country’s huge reserves of natural gas.

The law increased taxes on gas exports, but failed to nationalise the reserves — a long-standing demand of Bolivia’s mass movements and trade unions.

Protesters responded by blockading the streets, piling rocks and logs onto roads.

Last week they poured into the capital, La Paz, from the high plateau and the impoverished city of El Alto, which overlook the capital. Their chant was “Mesa go home — power to the people.”

Dynamite
James Lehrer, in La Paz, wrote in the Australian Green Left Weekly magazine, “On 30 May, behind the banner of the El Alto regional workers’ federation 10,000 workers and street merchants descended on La Paz, their determined approach announced by dynamite blasts.

“This contingent was followed by a similarly sized contingent of Aymara indigenous peasant farmers.

“Thousands more cocaleros (coca farmers) also reached La Paz to join the 10,000 who had arrived the week before.”

The next day, as congress met, numbers swelled to about 50,000.

Miners threw sticks of dynamite at riot police outside the congress building and the presidential palace.

Students from the Autonomous Public University of El Alto tried to break through barricades. Police retaliated with teargas, water cannon and rubber bullets.

By Wednesday of last week there were signs that discipline in the country’s poorly paid police force was breaking down.

A police officer from the capital called a radio station saying that his regiment had decided to stop going into the streets “to gas our women and our own children”.

He also demanded the nationalisation of Bolivian natural gas reserves.

The protests rapidly spread across the country.

Two thirds of the country’s highways were blocked, effectively closing off seven of Bolivia’s nine regions.

Lehrer writes, “Large demonstrations were held in Cochabamba, and the workers’ confederation of the Potosi region called for an indefinite general strike.”

Powerful
Teachers, healthcare workers, transport workers, bakers and miners all supported demands for the nationalisation of Bolivia’s gas reserves.

Powerful “neighbourhood organisations” called a general strike across El Alto.

Luis Gomez has been filing eyewitness reports for Narcosphere, a radical online forum.

He wrote on Friday of last week, “This morning the meatpackers came down from El Alto.

“The residents of the Viacha region (both urban and rural Aymara) were also present, together with a thousand peasant farmers arriving from Bolivia’s northern highlands.

“To the rhythm of saya (African-Bolivian) music, the workers summed up their answer to the government’s actions — ‘Now there will be civil war.’

“A group of youths carried a pair of dolls representing Carlos Mesa and congress president Hormando Vaca Diez. After marching for an hour through downtown La Paz, the dolls were burned.”

By Monday of this week there were about 500,000 on the streets of the capital. They chanted, “A people united will never be defeated.”

Bolivian state television reported that Mesa had left the presidential palace. In a late night television broadcast he offered his resignation.

It was unclear as Socialist Worker went to press whether congress would accept it.

Mesa clung on to power in mid-March when he made a similar offer in order to calm an earlier series of mass protests.

Nor was it clear whether the overthrow of Mesa would be enough for protesters on the streets.

nice. Workers party!