Bolivia - December 19, 2025
The capitalists, the oligarchy, the gringos (US imperialism, NT) with Decree 5503 and the Gasolinazo (Gas Price Hike, NT)… have declared brutal war on workers and peasants!
OUT WITH THE PAZ/LARA GOVERNMENT,
AND THE US IMPERIALISM!
Those at the bottom are already responding by forcing their leadership to call for an indefinite General Strike with mobilization…
From the grassroots of the COB, the National Struggle and self-defense Committees,
let us march to the:
REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE!
Those at the top are coming for everything, let's go after all of them!
The Paz/Lara government is finishing the work started by MAS party of Arce (and Morales before him), to carry on IMF's plan, the imperialist banking system, by implementing Decree 5503. It is a package of measures that empowers the government to approve investment contracts in mining and hydrocarbons by decree, taking a step toward selling lithium and all our natural resources out. As part of this attack, the elimination of subsidies for gasoline and diesel is an economic blow designed to shift the burden of the capitalists' crisis onto the shoulders of the exploited. Thus, while tax breaks are granted to large capitalists, workers' wages are devalued by inflation, increasing product prices so that capitalists double their profits and guarantee the plundering of our natural resources by imperialist transnational corporations, leaving the people to pay for the crisis. Enough of strangling the people! Let the capitalists pay for the crisis! Progressive taxes on large capitalists!
Before implementing this decree, the government met with representatives of Trump's economic team, specifically agents from Morgan Stanley, who travelled to Bolivia. Following its implementation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio celebrated the reforms, stating, "The United States welcomes President Rodrigo Paz's announcement today of a significant package of economic reforms aimed at restoring stability, prosperity, and investment to Bolivia after decades of failed policies," and even offered assistance for its implementation.
In response to this attack by the pro-US government, several workers' organizations, peasant groups, neighbourhood associations, and the poor people have spoken out against the gas price hike. At a national assembly of the Miners' Federation and later the COB (Bolivian Workers' Trade Union), the rank and file imposed an indefinite general strike on their leadership, with road blockades beginning today and continuing until the decree is repealed. MOVE FORWARD TO THOSE WHO FIGHT!
From the rank and file of the CORes (Regional Workers' Trade Unions), CODes (Departmental Workers' Trade Unions), and neighborhood associations, let us take matters into our own hands:
FOR A GRASSROOTS STRUGGLE COMMITTEE OF MINERS, FACTORY WORKERS, TEACHERS, POOR PEASANTS AND COMBATIVE STUDENTS TO GUARANTEE the path to the REVOLUTIONARY GENERAL STRIKE!
To guarantee breaking away with all the capitalist pirates commanded by the US imperialism and the IMF! LET’S DEFEAT THE GAS PRICE HIKE AND THE IMPERIALIST COLONIZATION PLAN!
While Mario Argollo of the COB continues saying, "We tell the president that he should have sought consensus and should work on measures that aren't so devastating to the wallets of the working class," the bureaucracy is constantly advising to the government that serves the US imperialism. Enough is enough! The more they subject the majority of the working class to one or another faction of the bourgeoisie, and the more divided and weakened the ranks of the working class are.
We must reclaim the COB from the union bureaucrats who have placed it at the feet of the bosses' governments like Morales, Arce, the murderous Añez, and now Paz/Lara.
To unite a National Congress of workers and poor peasants to reclaim the organizations of struggle, starting with the Miners' Federation and the COB!
Without traitorous and collaborationist bureaucrats! Before it's too late!
For a workers' and revolutionary solution to the crisis!
May capitalists pay for the crisis!
In 2023, transnational mining companies and cooperative owners siphoned off US$5.48 billion from the country, leaving behind royalties of US$220.2 million (4% of total exports). Meanwhile, these cooperative owners plunder 100% of the gold, pollute the land and rivers, and don't spend a single penny on pensions, healthcare, or industrial safety for the rank-and-file miners. They are the true “jukus” (thieves of minerals, NT) of the country! Enough of these cooperative owners! Let the rank-and-file cooperative miners join the ranks of the FSTMB with full rights!
- To have money for bread, fuel subsidies, food, and dollars: Nationalization without compensation and under workers' control of hydrocarbons, lithium, and all minerals! Let the cry of 2003-2005 return: Neither 30, nor 50! Nationalization!
- Expropriation without compensation of the banks so that transactions of dollars be under the control of workers' organizations. A single state bank to provide cheap credit to poor farmers. Nationalization of foreign trade under the control of the COB! No to the payment of the fraudulent external debt: Out with the IMF and other imperialist bankers who are plundering the nation!
- Expropriation of properties over 500 hectares of land from the fascist oligarchy of the Media Luna region without compensation, to be given to the poor peasant so the people can eat!
- Enough of miserable wages! Open the accounting books to demonstrate their profits! Any factory or mine that closes, suspends operations, or lays off workers must be placed under workers' control without compensation.
- A minimum, living, and adjustable wage, indexed monthly to the cost of living! A sliding scale of working hours, so that all available hands can contribute to production.
- Trial and punishment for all the army generals, the police, Añez, Camacho, and all the coup plotters and murderers of Senkata and Sacaba! Rifle, machine gun, Bolivia will not be silenced!
The government isn't coming with demagoguery, but with the bludgeon. It has already confined the police to their barracks, the same police who murdered two community members in Colcapirhua, Cochabamba. Attempting to attack the right to strike by imposing penalties of up to 10 years, it intends to impose the privatization of the mines and all state-owned companies. The military and police who supposedly "protect" the Huanuni mine will be the ones who drawn the miners in blood when they rise up in revolutionary struggle. Out with the military and police from the mining districts! May the miners' dynamite return!
We must establish self-defense committees, aimed at building a workers' and peasants' militia as in 1952, so that the Armed Forces and fascism do not once again fill the streets with the blood of workers and peasants
Against the power of those above, we must build the power of those below: For a revolutionary provisional government of workers and peasants! Out with the gringos from Bolivia!
Let's move towards unity and the anti-imperialist struggle of the workers and peasants of Bolivia and Latin America, together with the working class of the US! There, our best allies -migrant workers, the working class, and pro-Palestinian youth of the US- are fighting in the heart of the imperialist beast. There, to a great extent, lies the path to halting the imperialist aggression that seeks to drawn Latin America in blood and fire to complete the imposition of its plans of plunder and colonialism. One enemy, one class, one anti-imperialist struggle! Out with the gringos from Bolivia and Latin America! Out with the US imperialism from Venezuela! Out with the US military bases from all of Latin America and the Caribbean!
From the LSTI-Bolivia, we fight to establish a revolutionary leadership under the banners of the Fourth International, which is what the masses need to triumph. Against those who have placed it at the feet of the bureaucratic unions, of the capitalists, against those who speak and promise a socialism for the future by saving this rotten capitalist system that today survives through famine, wars, and a brutal attack on the working class: We call on the workers and combative youth to organize alongside us under this workers', socialist, and internationalist program of struggle that we fight against! Under the banners of Trotskyism and the Fourth International!
Bolivia will be socialist or a colony of Wall Street
Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores Internacionalistas (LSTI) de Bolivia, adherent to the FLTI
Democracia Obrera |
