Bolivia Rocked
By Mass
Protests Over Energy Law
By Bill Van Auken
03 June 2005
World
Socialist Website
Bolivias
capital of La Paz has entered its second week of mass protests by workers,
indigenous peasants and students demanding the nationalization of the
countrys energy industry.
Meanwhile, the government
agency responsible for maintaining the countrys roadways reported
Wednesday that 60 percent of the countrys highways have been blocked,
including all major routes into the capital. Peasants and rural teachers
have piled rocks, logs and other materials across the roads. Truckers
have also gone on strike, and food and fuel supplies are rapidly dwindling
in the city.
La Paz has witnessed
some of the biggest protests in the countrys history as tens of
thousands of peasants, teachers, miners and other workers have poured
into the city and laid siege to government buildings. Various reporters
estimated the largest of the demonstrations at 50,000. Throwing sticks
of dynamite and rocks, the demonstrators have confronted riot police
using tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon.
The sparks for these
upheavals were the approval by Bolivias Congress of a new energy
law last month and the drive by the countrys wealthier regionsbacked
by the oil companies and foreign capitalto achieve political autonomy.
The government of
Bolivian President Carlos Mesa, who came to power after the October
2003 upheavals that toppled his Washington-backed predecessor, Gonzalo
Sanchez Lozada (now in Miami exile), appears to be on the brink of collapse.
Mesa was Sanchez
Lozadas vice president, but distanced himself from him after government
forces massacred scores of unarmed protesters, igniting insurrectionary
conditions. Like his predecessor, he is a member of the right-wing Revolutionary
Nationalist Movement (MNR) and a supporter of the policies of privatization,
economic austerity and subordination to the transnationals that have
left more than two-thirds of the population in poverty while creating
unprecedented social polarization.
When the new energy
law was passed in mid-May, Mesa, who opposed the measure from the right,
sought to avoid responsibility and the political consequences by allowing
the Congress to enact it without his signature.
The effect, however,
has been far from what he intended. The additional taxes contained in
the measure antagonized foreign companies that are reaping massive profits
from the exploitation of Bolivias natural gas reserves. It also
served to fuel the drive by the right-wing and wealthy elite based in
the city of Santa Cruz to seek autonomy for the southern and eastern
provinces, where the bulk of Bolivias oil and gas reserves are
located.
At the same time,
the law provoked the growing anger of the countrys impoverished
majority, which sees control of the countrys natural resources
as a means of ending decades of social misery.
Demands for Mesas
resignation have come from the residents of El Alto, the impoverished
working class city outside of La Paz, who have marched on Congress and
the presidential palace. The same demand was made Wednesday by the head
of the Eastern Agricultural Chamber, representing the countrys
wealthiest landowners. Expressing ruling class impatience over Mesas
failure to crush the revolt, he declared, The president doesnt
have the pants to govern.
The energy sector
was privatized in 1996, falling under the effective control of foreign
companies, including British Petroleum and British Gas, Total of France,
Repsol YPF of Spain and Petrobras of Brazil. The scandal-plagued US
corporation Enron previously held a major interest as well.
Since privatization,
estimates of the countrys gas and petroleum reserves have increased
dramatically to 53 trillion cubic feet, second only to Venezuela on
the South American continent.
While the foreign
companies have cried foul over the new law raising royalties and taxes,
the privatization has left the key issue of setting the price of gas
exports in their hands. Thus, Bolivian gas is exported at a cut rate,
while the country is forced to pay market prices for any oil that it
must import. Meanwhile, the royalties and taxes, whatever their percentage,
are paid on a fraction of the real value of the resources that are being
extracted from the country.
As a study prepared
by the Center of Information and Documentation of Bolivia points out,
these sales are in any case fictitious, with the gas passing
from a Bolivian subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Repsol, for example,
to an Argentine or Chilean subsidiary of the same corporation.
Under these
conditions, once Bolivian gas crosses the border, it is converted into
thermo-electricity, liquefied natural gas, methanol (bound for the US
and Europe) and other petrochemical products, which allows the transnationals
to reap enormous profits at Bolivias expense, the study
declares.
The militancy of
the demonstrations has gone far beyond the intentions of the existing
opposition leaderships. The Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) headed
by the coca growers leader Evo Morales has failed to press the nationalization
demand, calling instead for an increase in the royalties paid by the
foreign companies from 18 percent to 50 percenta rate roughly
equivalent to the royalties paid on British oil.
A law has
already been passed and therefore it is not an issue for the Congress,
MAS legislator Antonio Peredo told the Argentine daily Clarin. According
to the constitution, nationalizations are the prerogative of the executive
branch through a supreme decree.
As he spoke, tens
of thousandsincluding much of the MASs own basewere
marching in La Paz and other parts of the country demanding nationalization.
An ever-wider layer of Bolivian society, including organizations representing
teachers, health workers and bakers as well as the federation of neighborhood
associations, has endorsed the demand.
Morales, whose party
won 19 percentthe largest shareof the vote in the last municipal
elections and is the second largest block in the Bolivian Congress,
played a central role in politically disarming the mass movement that
erupted in 2003 and allowing Mesas installation as the new president.
Attempting to play
the same role in the current crisis, the MAS reached a vague agreement
with the ruling party Wednesday to organize a simultaneous debate over
the two contradictory demands of autonomy and the convening of a constituent
assembly.
The deal was struck
between party leaders, as the Congress could not be assembled because
of the masses of demonstrators who have taken over the center of the
capital.
The demand for a
referendum on autonomy, put forward by representatives of the wealthy
class of farmers, landlords and bankers who dominate the Santa Cruz
region, is aimed at striking a separate bargain with the foreign corporations
at the expense of the rest of the country. The call for a constituent
assembly is aimed at forestalling such a referendum, and is backed by
the MAS and other opposition forces based in the west of the country.
An indication of
the explosive tensions over these issuesand the improbability
that they will be resolved through a legislative compromisecame
in the form of a violent clash in the city of Santa Cruz on Wednesday.
A march made up predominantly of indigenous peasants demanding the convening
of a constituent assembly was set upon by armed fascist thugs of the
Santa Cruz Youth Union. Leaders of the peasant group issued a statement
declaring, We will not allow the aggression of the fascists. We
will return, and the next time we will be ready to repel all aggression.
The Bolivian Workers
Federation, or COB, the countrys main trade union organization,
criticized the congressional deal. To trade nationalization for
the constituent assembly is a betrayal, said Jaime Solares, the
COB executive secretary, who added a demagogic threat to burn
the parliament if Congress did not approve a nationalization law.
The COB leader,
however, has advanced no independent alternative. On the contrary, he
recently declared his hope that a government headed by a patriotic
and honest military officer would replace Mesa. He said he was
willing to accept the rule of a colonel or a general who
he hoped would be like Venezuelas Hugo Chavez. When he made this
view public before a rally of workers, Solares was met with a resounding
cry of no!
The historical record
of the COBs misleadership includes its subordinationbacked
by the revisionist Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR) of Guillermo
Loraof the working class to the left military ruler
Gen. Juan Jose Torres at the beginning of the 1970s. His short-lived
regime paved the way to the seizure of power by the right-wing dictator
Gen. Hugo Banzer in 1971, ushering in a long period of brutal military
dictatorship.
That the military
will intervene is a real possibility. The head of the Bolivian armed
forces, Admiral Luis Aranda, was compelled to make a public statement
denying coup preparations by the military. He also repudiated
a pair of lieutenant colonels, calling themselves the Generational Military
Movement, who advocated Mesas replacement with a revolutionary
government composed of all sectors of Bolivian society.
Both officers were sacked.
MAS leader Morales,
meanwhile, reported that elements of the Santa Cruz bourgeoisie were
conspiring with sections of the military to bring about a right-wing
coup aimed at crushing social protest.
For its part, the
Bush administration has made it clear that it is following the Bolivian
events with growing alarm. We are very concerned about serious
challenges to Bolivias stability from radical opposition groups
that threaten the countrys hard-won gains in democracy, economic
development, and the fight against drug trafficking, Jonathan
Farrar, a US State Department official in charge of international narcotics
and law enforcement affairs, testified before a Congressional subcommittee
May 25.
Meanwhile, Richard
Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said Wednesday that Washington
was in contact with the [Bolivian] government, we are also in
contact with other nations that are very concerned and worried by the
situation there.
This last reference
was apparently to the governments of Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. While both have postured as left
alternatives to Washingtons policies in Latin America, their governments
are participants in the exploitative relations worked out between the
foreign oil companies and the Bolivian regime. Likewise, they both fear
the potential domestic impact of a continuing revolutionary crisis in
Bolivia.
Boucher added that
US discussions with the besieged government of Carlos Mesa were on the
security situation, about the situation as regards democracy and
maintaining the democracy in Bolivia.
As elsewhere in
the world, this US struggle for democracy translates into
maintaining or installing regimes that assure the unfettered operations
of the multinationals and US access to cheap energy supplies. That these
aims could be furthered through such undemocratic means as Washingtons
backing a seizure of power by the Bolivian military is a real danger.
The entire Andean
region is a tinderbox, as evidenced by last Aprils ouster of the
pro-US President Lucio Gutierrez by mass protests in Ecuador and the
mounting unrest confronting the deeply unpopular regime of Perus
President Alejandro Toledo. Under these conditions, Washington sees
the Bolivian events as a serious threat.