BY DOUG LORIMER
Three days after a massive wave of protests forced Bolivia's US-backed president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, to resign and flee to Miami, tens of thousands of workers and peasants massed in the capital, La Paz, on October 20, vowing to continue the struggle for social justice. "We are really happy with what we've done so far. But we must keep fighting. It's not over", Jorge Khana, a peasant militant, told reporters.
For several days prior to Lozada's resignation, Bolivia's armed forces and police had brutally, but unsuccessfully, attempted to prevent columns of protesting workers — some brandishing sticks of dynamite — and peasants from converging in the centre of La Paz. More than 70 protesters were killed in army and police attacks.
A general strike, called by the COB, Bolivia's trade union federation, had paralysed the country, while peasants had occupied rural police stations and students had occupied universities.
Up to 1 million people throughout the country were out on the streets on October 17 demanding Lozada's resignation. A quarter of million protesters rallied in La Paz's Plaza de San Francisco, near the presidential palace.
Washington, via US ambassador David Greenlee, who formerly served as the CIA's station chief in Bolivia, tried to save Lozada by threatening retaliation against any government arising out of the mass rebellion. Greenlee told the Bolivian press that "in the case of a government arising out of pressure from the street, the international community will isolate Bolivia".
However, in the face of the mass revolt, Lozada resigned and boarded a plane to Miami. His vice-president, Carlos Mesa, was sworn in as his successor in an attempt to quell the mass worker-peasant rebellion. "The abyss is still close at hand, and any mistake, any lack of perspective, any stinginess can push us over that abyss", Mesa reportedly told members of his new cabinet on October 19.
The October 20 rally was addressed by Mesa, who promised to organise a referendum on the government's earlier plan to build a US$5 billion pipeline to export natural gas to the United States, probably via Chile. The plan was widely seen by workers and peasants as a plot to further plunder Bolivia's natural resources for the benefit of US corporations and was the issue that sparked the mass revolt against Lozada.
The rally was also addressed by Felipe Quispe, leader of the United Confederation of Workers and Peasants of Bolivia (CSUTCB) — the union of indigenous Aymara peasants and farm workers. If Mesa fulfills his promises, Quispe told the rally, "he will be our friend". If he doesn't, he is "a friend of the gringos and will be our enemy".
Quispe has called for the cancellation of the natural gas project, and an end to the program to eradicate coca crops — a US-orchestrated campaign that has devastated peasants' livelihoods.
At a news conference on October 21, coca farmers' federation leader Evo Morales, who, along with Quispe, spearheaded the mass rebellion, congratulated the protesters for pushing Lozada out of office. "Finally, after so many years, we toppled the symbol of neoliberalism, of corruption, of the political mafia", Morales said.
"Within a month, [Mesa] has to start giving some clear signs", Morales later told Associated Press. "If not, once again, the people will take to the streets."
Morales is an opposition member of Congress and leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party who narrowly failed to defeat Lozada in last year's presidential election. The final decision was referred to the Congress, which chose the millionaire mining magnate over the left-wing farmers' leader.
Morales dismissed Mesa's new cabinet, which was sworn in on October 20, as "a group of technocrats linked to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank", the Spanish news service EFE reported. He also expressed doubts concerning the validity of two of Mesa's other initiatives — a revision of the hydrocarbon law and a call for a referendum on the export of natural gas.
"The Bolivian people demand the total recovery of the hydrocarbons", because "the transnational companies have sacked the country for too long" with the support of the "political mafia" that has benefited from the partial privatisation implemented in Bolivia since 1995, Morales said. "There is nothing to consult [in a referendum] when the uprising was to recover the hydrocarbons", he added.
Morales cited reports showing that landlocked Bolivia could earn much more by renationalising the natural-gas fields and liquefying the gas itself than by implementing Lozada's plan to locate the liquefaction plant at an export terminal in Chile or Peru.
He said he would give the new government 90 days to demonstrate that it would be different from its predecessor, after which he would demand radical changes, including "construction of a new state" and "an end to the neoliberal model".
According to EFE: "Morales described his model government as 'a participative democracy' that takes into account the experiences of Cuba, a country he admires for its advances in 'education and health care', and Venezuela, which he praised for achieving transformation through its own constitutional assembly in 1998-99."
From Green Left Weekly, October 29, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.