Bolivia - September 29, 2024

US imperialism offensive on Latin America strangles Bolivia and deepens the attack on its exploited classes

Mientras se profundiza la ofensiva colonialista del imperialismo yanqui por el litio y todos los recursos naturales en América Latina y Bolivia, han dejado una nación desangrada y estrangulada por las transnacionales. Es así que los dólares se van para el pago a la banca imperialista, así también las exportaciones del saqueo de los minerales o de la agroindustria de la Media Luna, son fugados del país.

While the colonialist offensive of US imperialism for lithium and all natural resources in Latin America and Bolivia deepens, they have left a nation bled and strangled by transnationals. Thus, dollars go to repay to imperialist banks, and exports from the looted minerals or agro industry of the Media Luna are fleeing the country.

The plundering is reflected in the fact that, thanks to the laws favorable to the big grain companies (which control 60% of the land in Santa Cruz) such as Cargill so that they can plunder and burn the forests to increase their production, these agrarian transnationals in 2022 were able to export close to 3 billion dollars, equal to the export of gas, while the mining companies take away annually close to 4 billion dollars; besides, there is the repayment of the fraudulent external debt, which this year has already taken 1,051 million dollars. The worst thing is that part of the money left over from the plundering is spent on subsidizing gasoline and diesel. This reveals the farce of “industrialization” with which the MAS government has been deceiving these years. As a result, the crisis is worsening with the emptying of Bolivian gas wells and, in contrast, the enormous gas reserves that Argentina has, which have dislocated Bolivia as a link in hydrocarbon production. In addition to this, on September 18, gas sales to Argentina were stopped.

Thus, the government and its pact with the oligarchy of the Media Luna, during all these years, have guaranteed to USA the deepening of the plunder of hydrocarbons and minerals. The local bourgeois gangs, which are intertwined and subordinated as direct agents of imperialism, fear an offensive by the masses more than being left out of business, because they know that an independent action by workers and peasants would sweep away all of them and their properties. Therefore, the struggle of the exploited is for: Gringos out of Bolivia and Latin America! We must break with imperialism, expropriate without compensation and under workers' control its transnationals! No to the repayment of the fraudulent debt with the imperialist banks!
Open the road to the unity and anti-imperialist struggle of the workers and peasants of Bolivia and the continent! We will only be able to expel imperialism if we win a common struggle of the working and peasant masses of the whole Latin America together with our best allies, the US working class and youth, who today are the vanguard of the struggle, in the heart of the imperialist beast of USA, against the massacre of the US in Palestine that is seeking to advance in the Middle East.

The Arce government, supported by the murderous Banzerista generals, is the fist of the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie to attack the workers

The MAS government of Arce is applying the plan of US imperialism and is unloading the crisis on the shoulders of the workers with inflation, the increase in the cost of the living basket, with a devaluation of the currency that has already eaten up the miserable wages, and the lack of gasoline, while the removal of the grants on gasoline and diesel is being prepared. Thus, factory workers are going out to fight against the employers; the workers of the  “Trebol” urban sanitation are going out against the employers’ abuses; peasant organizations of Tupac Katari of La Paz are asking for the “immediate” resignation of President Luis Arce and the “sold to the Government” leaders, while they are mobilizing to recover their confederation from the hands of the men of both Arce and Evo Morales, and going out to block roads against the high cost of living. Also sectors of the neighborhood councils of El Alto are going out shouting: “ Arce, Evo, the same crap.” That’s because while the unprecedented suffering of the masses is deepening, the bourgeois gangs of the MAS split between Arce and Morales are fighting for political and economic interests. Morales seeks to be enabled to participate in the electoral trap that they are preparing for 2025 and thus fights for control of the state to keep the spoils of a percentage of the businesses as he did for 14 years with the income from hydrocarbons and mining during his government. Thus, the march to the seat of government, promoted by Evo called "March to save Bolivia", mobilizing leaders of peasant organizations and mining cooperatives, ended in clashes between the workers themselves upon reaching the city of La Paz and a repression by the police sent by Arce. Enough!

We will not defeat the attack of the government and the transnationals with the help of Morales, that cowardly bourgeois that escaped during the fascist coup of the Media Luna in 2019 while it was the workers and peasants who fought and gave their lives in the streets. Neither a mineworker, nor a worker, or a poor peasant should give their life for the bourgeois fractions of the MAS, nor tie their fate to them! We workers do not give our lives for our executioners! Therefore, it becomes urgent to regain political independence, to recover our workers' and peasants' organizations. We must break all pacts with the bourgeoisie to make way for the workers' and peasants' alliance!
The working class must intervene independently in the struggle that is underway in Bolivia today, because if we continue to tie our fate to the interests of the bourgeoisie and its various gangs, as the workers' bureaucracy does with its support for the "national industry" watching over the businesses of the executioners, we cannot fight. That is why we need a revolutionary COB that breaks with the bourgeoisie and reestablishes the worker-peasant alliance and puts into practice the slogan: “Rifle and shrapnel, Bolivia will not shut up!” As in the heroic revolution of 1952. In order to unify the workers' ranks with the poor peasants, we must get rid of this burden that is the workers' bureaucracy! With these leaderships we cannot fight, and much less defeat the attack of Arce and the capitalists!
It is time to fight for a Revolutionary leadership of the COB under the programmatic legacy of the Pulacayo Thesis!
That's the way! All organizations that call themselves revolutionary and speak in the name of the working class must break with the bourgeoisie.
We the Trotskyists of the Liga Socialista de Trabajadores Internacionalistas of Bolivia, fight to establish a revolutionary party in Bolivia, not a reformist party of the workers, as proposed by some organizations that call themselves Trotskyist; because any political instrument of the workers that is not there to fight for the revolution and help the proletariat and the exploited set up their organizations of self-determination and direct democracy, armed, as was the COB in 1952 and is established as a double power of workers and peasants so that the masses take the crisis into their hands, they do not fight for a revolutionary solution to Bolivia nor for setting up a revolutionary party.
In the struggle to establish revolutionary mass combat organizations that are suited to the current moment that the exploited are going through, we will build this revolutionary and insurrectionary party, collaborating with the masses to distinguish who are their allies and who are their enemies, so that the historical experiences of the great revolutionary processes in Latin America and the world, and in Bolivia in particular, can be taken up again. In this way, we will also brand with fire the betrayals and deceptions to which the masses were subjected in the historic workers' revolutions of 1952, 1971 and 2003-2005.
Today Bolivia is at a crossroads: either the bourgeoisie provides a way out, as it already tried to do with fascism in 2019 and the coup attempt, or the workers and peasants do so in an independent struggle. Today, the clash against the capitalists is decisive and the masses must be prepared for the revolution, as what the bourgeoisie is preparing is the counterrevolution with new massacres, because there is no doubt that when the relationship of forces gives them the chance, they will once more bring out the Banzerist armed forces.

We call on all militant workers and students to join our forces to create a revolutionary nucleus that will be at the disposal of the masses and create their self-determination bodies, and to wage this battle together.
“The liberation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves”

Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores Internacionalistas of Bolivia (LSTI)
Adherent to the FLTI
Democracia Obrera