Bolivia

Revolution in the Making

- Luis Bilbao*, Aporrea.org, June 9, 2005 -

Because the mechanism sustaining former president Carlos Mesa, until he resigned on June 7, has been broken and will no longer work, Bolivia's revolutionary forces are going into action: workers, peasants and indigenous peoples have occupied the Santa Cruz de la Sierre and Sisa Sica oil fields and are preventing crude oil from being shipped to Arica; La Paz continues to be occupied by miners, youth and the inhabitants of El Alto; thousands of peasants and indigenous peoples hurry to block access to Sucre, where Congress is trying to meet, in a desperate attempt of the ruling classes to keep the scaffolding of a power from disintegrating.

Nevertheless, it's not up to Mesa's successor to deal with the popular insurrection. Bickering about whether or not to hand over the mandate to the president of the Senate, the House of Deputies or the Supreme Court of Justice -- the latter could call an early election -- are nothing other than stalling tactics, in a bid to gain more time. In Bolivia or anywhere else for that matter, capital knows full well that in the event of a revolution, there are only two options: the territorial breaking up of the country and foreign military intervention. In reality the former of the two -- and its immediate ensuing consequences -- may serve as the excuse for the latter.

That's why the U.S. Army's Southern Command Chief of Staff, General Ben Craddock, arrived unexpectedly in Buenos Aires in a manner which coincided with Mesa's resignation and his request to Brazil and Argentina to get involved in the settling of the crisis. Craddock assessed his response with the heads of the armies of Mercosur, including Bolivia, while the governments of Nestor Kirchner and Lula de Silva were deploying their respective mediators, Raul Alconada and Marco Aurelio Garcia.

The three protagonist forces at this crucial time for the region: workers, peasants and the Native people on one side; on the other U.S. imperialism in its crudest expression of military threat; and two key governments who are proposing a solution similar to the one used in Haiti, that they send in troops under a double excuse: "keeping the peace and assisting democracy," and "stopping the United States from intervening militarily in Bolivia."

In fact, these were the arguments first used by Brasilia and Buenos Aires to justify sending their own troops to Haiti, to which they added sovereignty and anti-imperialist talk. But if they were able to hide their ruse to a certain extent from the population, its repetition, as far as Bolivia goes, such patronage would not be seen in the same light. If such an adventure were undertaken, both governments would be openly and immediately labelled counter-revolutionary tools being manipulated to suppress the just uprising of a people defending their natural resources that have been plundered for five centuries, and determined to take their destiny in their own hands.

It turns out that what is being played out in Bolivia, other than the national, participative and anti-imperialist revolution confronting multinational corporations and local capitalists in the streets, is the concrete description of two governments which, born out of a similar popular will, have taken the tortuous path of doublespeak and the vain search of a third way between revolution and counter-revolution. Meanwhile, Bolivia's insurgent forces are trying to work out a common program of action and bring about an effective centre of alternative power. The intelligence and audacity required for such a thing depends, to a large extent, on the course of immediate events.

Whatever the case, the revolution is underway. It is imperative to act rapidly with regard to the setting up an anti-imperialist block aimed at cutting the feet out from under the U.S. strategy of direct or indirect military intervention. In Bolivia, the U.S. will try through war and the breaking up of the country to regain the strategic initiative they lost as a result of the dynamics of the South American convergence. It is crucial to bring about united and vigorous denunciation as well as awareness across all of South America to explain the importance of what is at stake. Parties and organizations belonging to the Sao Paulo Forum (which are meeting July 1) must immediately take a stand against any foreign diplomatic and/or military intervention in Bolivia. It is also necessary that they refuse to entangle themselves in a system of proposals and mediation, which on the surface infers that the Bolivian masses are incapable of charting their own course, but in reality is aimed at eroding the revolutionary will that is driving them.

A movement of the largest scope possible must immediately tell Sir Craddock to leave and let the military of the region know that they must not follow the road of imperialism against their peoples. The youth and all the men and women who are aware of the crucial times they are living through, must let governments and political organizations know that the smallest step towards foreign intervention in Bolivia will ignite an even stronger force; our historical roots and those of all of Latin America, of the tens and hundreds of thousands will give rise to international brigades once again ready to pick up Che's rifle.

* Luis Bilbao, an Argentinian journalist, is director of the journal Critica de Nuestro Tiempo and editor of El Diplo , Southern Cone edition of Le Monde Diplomatique based in Buenos Aires. (Translated from Spanish by Gerard Jugant.)