Date: Tue, 16 Jul 96 12:20:06 PDT
From: LCMRCI <global-AT-uk.pi.net>
Subject: Bolivia: Lessons of the General Strike


Bolivia: Lessons of the General Strike. 


On 21 April marked the end of the indefinite general strike launched by the 
COB (Bolivian Trade Union Council) five weeks ago. This was the third 
approximately one-month-long general strike in two years. On 5 March the COB 
launched a one-day general strike. On 12 the COB organised a national hunger 
strike of union leaders. On 18 March the COB began the indefinite general 
strike. In Bolivia the minimum living family wage is L. 300 (US$500) and the 
official minimum wage is only L. 30 (45 US$). The government only offered an 
increase of 8%. This increase was lower than the 1995 inflation which was 
12,5%. The COB demanded an increase of at least 200%. Another big issue is 
the question of the privatisations. The people are very angry with the 
de-nationalisation of the railways (ENFE) and the Bolivian airlines (LAB). 
Now, President Sanchez de Losada, is trying to privatise the biggest company 
in Bolivian: YPFB (Gasand oil). YPFB produced more than half of Bolivian 
exports. The great majority of the population is against this because they 
are afraid that the oil prices will increase and that the company that 
generates half of Bolivian exports will benefitonly multi-nationals.

Between 1982 and 1986 Bolivia lived under a revolutionary period. Its high 
point were the March general strike (in which the miners took La Paz for 2 
weeks) and the September five-week general strike in which the new MNR 
(Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) government managed to divide the wage 
workers from the small owners and imposed the beginning of the neo-liberal 
counter-reforms. In August 1986 a general strike with a 15,000 strong march 
>from Oruro to La Paz was defeated by the army. Since then a new period of 
reactionary demo-liberal offensive began. 

The MNR was the party that made the 1952 "revolution" that brought land 
reform, the nationalisation of the mines and universal suffrage. In 1985 it 
returned to power and, like all the bourgeois nationalist regimes, it became 
now a direct agent of "Thatcherist" policies. Then in 1989 the Revolutionary 
Left Movement (MIR), [a Castroite guerrillaist party founded in 1971, took 
power in alliance with the ADN   of general Banzer (the Bolivian "Pinochet" 
between 1971 and 1978). The MIR-ADN continued all the neo-liberal policies. 
In 1993 the MNR again returned to power in alliance with the indian 
nationalists (MRTKL) and the MBL (the Bolivian section of the 
Castro-Lula-Aristides Sao Paulo Forum's international). 

The new MNR president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is the man that destroyed 
the biggest state company (COMIBOL) that controlled the majority of the big 
tin mines and that was the main company for decades in Bolivia. Sanchez' 
company     (COMSUR) bought many former COMIBOL pits and now is the biggest 
private tin mining company. Sanchez programme is based in 3 "terrible laws": 

	[1] "capitalisation" of all the state companies (to sell the 
majority of the shares to foreign capitals); 
	[2] education counter-reform (to destroy the powerful teachers' 
union and
the university's economic autonomy, to promote private education and to give 
all the schools to poor city councils);and 
	[3] "popular participation" (to give money for public works to the 
peasant communities and popular districts with the aim to destroy the unions 
and to divide the peasants against the teachers and public workers).

The last law has some popular support. The teachers and students managed to 
avoid the worst aspect of the educative counter-reform but not all. The 
government managed to sell 50% of the shares of the telephone company 
(except in the largest cities because the biggest civic strike stopped it) 
and the great majority of all the big state companies.

The strike.
In the last ten years the MNR and the MIR-ADN governments launched four 
"state of emergency" (state of siege) in which hundreds of union leaders 
were put in jail and the rights of strike and constitutional rights were 
suspended. This year the strike was made at the time of an international 
conference of the Rio's group and the European Union in Bolivia. The 
government preferred a semi-militarised La Paz without launching an official 
state of siege. In the last five weeks Bolivia has been shaken by the 
biggest demonstrations in years. Every day La Paz and other cities were 
paralised by demonstrations and blockades. The people were not afraid of the 
police and constantly the demonstrators beat the policemen. Thousand used 
ynamite and slings against the repression. On 26 March the repression killed 
one person. On 28 March tens of thousands organised a 12 kilometers march to 
La Paz. On 2 April private transport was completely paralised and thousands 
destroyed or burned several cars and wagons of the new privatised Railway 
company. 

Nevertheless, the general strike did not defeat the government. At the end 
Sanchez de Losada added only 1% more to the wage increase of the 8% that he 
offered. The government said that it will liberate all union prisoners 
except the COB's number3, Lucio Gonzales, who has been in prison since early 
1996 under the false accusation of the participation in a MRTA's kidnapping 
of a businesman. The government postponed the "capitalisation" of YPFB to 
July. While the strike didn't win a victory is was also not a serious 
defeat. Workers gained some ground.  The workers developed more radical 
methods of fighting and the government is weaker.

Why didn't the strike win?
The government said that the "capitalisation" of YPFB was the"mother of the 
battles". If the COB wanted to stop that privatisation it was necessary to 
prepare a serious battle. The bureaucracy started the "mother of the 
battles" with a national hunger strike of more than 200 unionleaders on 12 
March. The hunger strike is a defensive tactic that might be used when you 
or your relatives are in jail. But when you are trying to defeat the 
government's neo-liberal plan and to increase wages this measure is 
completely ineffective. The majority of the Bolivians live in a permanent 
involuntary hunger strike with little wages and food. The hunger strike 
couldn't defeat the government. Instead of puting hundred of thousand of 
militants in isolated rooms without food, they should have organised street 
meetings, blockades and pickets, and pressed all the unions to enter the 
strike. One week later the COB launched a general strike. 

A total general strike means that transport, the banks,  telecommunications, 
post office and production should stop completely. Nevertheless, the COB 
only managed to stop the schools, the state universities, the health sector, 
the state mines and a few companies. It was an indefinite general strike but 
mainly of the service sector. The streetsellers and the pensioners played a 
significant role in the daily demonstrations. Nevertheless the strike didn't 
managed to stop the majority of the national production.

In some isolated days several cities were completely paralised because the 
transport and the civic committees decided to launch regional stoppages. In 
Beni, on 24 of April, the streets were empty and the students formed a 
"civic police" to replace the police.
The Oil workers are a privileged workers aristocracy that in the past 
constantly broke general strikes. Nevertheless, this year they started to 
fight. But the oil union should have made its task the occupation of the 
oilfields. They didn't prepare for the strike and the army broke them. Had 
the oil union managed to stop the production of gas the strike could have 
had a big impact in damaging the economy.  

The peasants in 1979 were able to blockade the cities and to stop the 
introduction of rural goods. In this strike the peasant unions made sevral 
blockade  (especially around Cochabamba, the biggest peasant department in 
which   the peasants are fighting for the legalisation of the coca 
production). Nevertheless, the majority of the peasants didn't participate 
in the strike.

The factory unions, instead of organising a general stoppage with factory 
occupations, said that only their leaders would enter in a hunger strike and 
that the workers should make blockades in their lunch/breakfast hours. 
Therefore the strategic mining companies (like Inti Raymi, ENAF and COMSUR) 
were not paralysed by mass strikes.

The teachers, student and the population created  self-defence pickets that 
were able to beat the repression at several times. What was needed was to 
develop and centralise such bodies. The COB didn't do that.

A general strike means that it is necessary to create new workers' power 
bodies and leaderships. The COB should have  launched people's councils and 
assemblies with the popular districts, transport and all the industry 
sectors to organise and direct the strike. These bodies would must have 
delegates elected and recallable by rank and file assemblies. The same 
principles have to be applied to a national strike committee. This body has 
to lead the strike under the control of the rank and file. Without rank and 
file control of the strike, the bureaucracy was able to authorise the 
different unions to deal separately with the government and in the end they 
betrayed the strike.

The left.
The Bolivian left is in a serious crisis. Its strategy is to try to create a 
popular front behind the no-neoliberal borugeoisie. Dr. Morales D vila is 
the leader of the radical left "Workers Tribune" paper. He was a 6 weeks in 
prision because he accused Sanchez of being a "betrayer of the fatherland". 
He is leading a National Committee for the Defense of our Natural Resources 
and National Sovereinty in alliance with Banzer's ADN, the MIR and the 
bourgeois populist CONDEPA. They also are trying to influence the army that 
is not happy with the privatisation of the railways to the "Chileans". This 
is a popular front in which the left  is under a programmer of defence of 
the national capitalist economy with more state production and less 
privatised companies. 

The majority of the left is capitulating to anti-Chilean slogans. Some 
demonstrations burnt Chilean flags. We are against every private company but 
we defend the Chilean workers and condemn every expression of national 
chauvinism. We are demanding a halt to this anti-Chilean campaign and that 
the COB and the Chilean CUT made a coalition to fight against private 
companies in both countries. As the left is using anti-Chilean slogans, the 
government is denouncing constanntly the presence of Peruvian subversives as 
instigators of several radical demonstrations. 

The COB had several leaders that are members of the government coalition. 
The left that is not in the government (ASD, PCB, PRP, PS-1, ASP, Eje) is 
trying to rebuild a popular front with sectors of bourgeois nationalism to 
try to reform the system.

The Lora POR led the La Paz' teachers unions and they became the most 
important left opposition to the bureaucracy. Nevertheless, the POR are have 
a Healy-like adventurerist and slander policy.[Healy was the leader the the 
British Workers Revolutionary Party notorious for his crude methods and 
personality cult]. The POR say that Bolivia has for the last 15 years been 
in a revolutionary, pre-insurrectionary situation despite the fact that the 
majority of the industrial workers didn't paralyse industry and there is no 
dual power. They said that the demo-liberal government that had only 40 
political prisioners (less than Britain) is a fascist dictatorship. They 
reject the strategy of a workers' council insurrection led by a mass 
Bolshevik party. For them a spontaneous insurrection had to be led by a 
party of less than 100 militants in alliance with "Bolivianist" [i.e. 
nationalist] military officers. The POR is trying to recruit generals and 
colonels to a programme that proposes to build a Bolivianised army with 
better weapons and wages to defend the fatherland against the foreigners and 
"gringos". Instead of denouncing the demobilising character of the hunger 
strikes, the POR tried to organise an water-only hunger strike in which they 
tried to replace the mass action with the heroic action of supermen. 




THE MASSES DEFEAT A COUP D'ETAT IN PARAGUAY

Paraguay is one of the centers of the mass resistance in Latin America. On 
April 22, a few days before the 48 hour general strike called by the three 
national unions for the 2 and 3 of May, the chief of the army, general Lino 
Oviedo, launched a coup d'etat. Juan Carlos Wasmosy, the first elected 
president of Paraguay in decades, decided to ask the chief of the army for 
his resignation  In response Oviedo made a putch. 

Thousands occupied the streets to fight against the coup. Neverthelss, 
Wasmosy made an incredible deal. He made general Oviedo his defence 
minister!  The new chief of the army, general Oscar Diaz Dalmas, declared 
that was a follower of Oviedo and that he accepted the agreement. This 
provoked a crisis in his cabinet and massive opposing demonstrations among 
the masses. Nearly all the cabinet, except the chancellor Luis Maris 
Ramiarez Boettner, refused to participate in the appointment of Oviedo as 
defence minister. 

The big mass demonstrations pressured the government. Oviedo and Ramiarez 
had to resign. After this victory the workers have to be confident in their 
struggle and to have a class independence. They have to create a pole of 
attraction as a class to the peasants and poor people. All the union and 
peasant organisation have to create a Struggle National Committee with rank 
and file delegates. They should demand not only the resignation of Oviedo 
but the abolition of the officer corps, the cancellation of the external 
debt and the expropiation of the capitalists. For that reason the workers 
and peasant organisations have to break with the bourgeoisie and organise 
popular assemblies, militias and soldiers unions and fight for the power.  

Wasmosy and Oviedo are members of the same official party (the Colorados - 
Colorured) that ruled Paraguay since the time ofthe terrible Nazi-protector 
dictator Stroessner. The main opponent of Wasmosy, Luis Maria Argasa, 
decided to remain silent during the coup. General Oviedo now is launching an 
electoral campaign for the presidential elections of 1998 and he is being 
supported by the "Democratic" faction of the Coloured party. Vice-president 
Roberto Seifart, criticised the Wasmosy-Oviedo deal and now is trying 
tocapitalise the anti-militarist opposition. The toilers should not have 
trust in any of these wings of the ruling party. They have to create their 
own and revolutionary party.  

28 April,

Ramon Aguilar (member of Poder Obrero and 
of the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist 
International).



FOR THE COORDINATION OF THE GENERAL STRIKE OF BOLIVIA AND
PARAGUAY

Resolution of Poder Obrero (Bolivia) and Socialist LabourParty (Paraguay)



The indefinite general strike that is happening in Bolivia and the 48 hours 
general strike called for 2 and 3 of May in Paraguay had the same enemy: the 
IMF and its plans of privatisations and adjustments.

The Socialist Labour Party of Paraguay and Workers Power of Bolivia decided 
to launch a combined campaign for the defence and coordination of both 
fights. Our organisations assume the compromise to propaganidise both 
actions and to build solidarity relations between Bolivian and Paraguayan 
unions.This paralisations are the vanguard of mass resistance in the 
continent. We have to fight for its victory and to stop the meassures of 
repression (including a probable state of siege or coup) and the 
conciliation of labour bureaucracies. We fight under the aim that this 
struggles should have to be led by strike committees with rank and file 
elected and recallable leaders and that it have to be create popular 
assemblies, self-defence pickets and the peasant-worker alliance.

We call the unions in Bolivia and Paraguay to meet, coordinate and to 
convene the rest of the continental union organisations with the task of 
launching a continental fight.

action/ 

Cancellation of the foreign debt and rupture with the IMF!
For the defence of the public companies! 
For the re-nationalisation of the privatised companies under 
workers'control!

Socialist Labour Party (Paraguay)
Poder Obrero (Workers Power) Bolivia
Mid-April 1996







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