Bolivia - May 5, 2022
Echoes of May 1, 2022
The Arce government that attacks the labor movement on behalf of imperialism marches alongside the collaborationist leadership of the COB
Enough of class collaboration and traitors in the labor movement!
For a revolutionary leadership in the COB to unite those who are fighting
The COB must break with the "pacification" deal among the MAS, the Media Luna and the OAS!
In the midst of a sea of layoffs and growing misery on this May 1st, the International Workers' Day when the proletariat upholds the struggle of the world proletariat and the martyrs of Chicago; unfortunately, a new flagrant policy of class collaboration is displayed under the leadership of the COB bureaucracy, similar to last year's one when Huarachi of the COB also marched together with President Arce of the MAS in Santa Cruz. This 2022 in Oruro the COB marched again together with Arce and Vice President David Choquehuanca while the latter were announcing a salary increase of 3% to the basic salary and 4% to the national minimum, that is, a miserable increase of 86 Bolivians while the businessmen and the transnationals continue making extra profits even at the cost of reducing the workforce by laying off recklessly and demanding infernal production rates from the rest of permanent workers.
We workers had nothing to celebrate because we continue to be prosecuted, with persecuted comrades, with workers fighting in State institutions for their reincorporation to work for months and years; we continue without justice for our class brothers and sisters from Senkata and Sacaba, for rapes and femicides that are not given a solution; that is why this May Day in the depths of the working class the anger and outrage have been evident, because every time we want to fight our organizations of struggle are on the side of the executioners, the bosses and the anti-worker government. That is the tragedy of the labor movement, the terrible cooptation of our fighting organizations, that is why it was not a surprise that the COB has now marched with Arce and the MAS, that Bolivarian bourgeoisie that has proven to be brave to attack and repress the labor movement but cowardly to confront the fascist Media Luna, the imperialist transnationals and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This May 1, not only has the labor bureaucracy put itself to its knees before the Bolivarian bourgeoisie; the Communist Party of Bolivia (PCB) has been also militantly promoting this openly class-collaboration policy, because with their flags they supported Arce behind the Cobist bureaucracy. What an irony that the same mining bureaucracy marches on with its banners and flags where the face of Che Guevara is shown, whereas it was the same PCB - with whom they are marching again this May 1st - who handed over Che Guevara for the murderous Bolivian army to liquidate him in 1967. However, they gladly marched and rejoiced in their empty phrases together with the Bolivarian bourgeoisie that is starving the people, but yes, once again with their backs turned to the Bolivian and world labor movement. And we say this because the PCB, which has a string of betrayals at the national level, has been supporting at the international level – like other reformist currents such as the POR – the genocidal al-Assad in Syria, Gaddafi in Libya, etc., arguing that these murderers of workers are "anti-imperialist" against the US. Nothing different from what they affirm in Bolivia when they go out to shield Arce and shout about his supposed anti-imperialism although he hands over the nation the same or worse than Áñez did.
The march in La Paz was not the exception either, since the factory and departmental union bureaucracy gave the floor to the Minister of Labor as part of the day in the concentration of the march called at the Cervecería Boliviana Nacional (CBN). In the midst of the class war where the businessmen, as part of the ruling class, increase production rates by laying off workers and protecting their profits at the expense of the bones and muscles of the factory workers, the factory management and organizations such as the POR have been systematically raising the policy of "defense of the national industry" against smuggling. This is meant to defend the profits of the Bolivian slave-owner employers who hide behind the Chamber of Commerce and at the international level behind the Mercosur, which is a true free trade agreement to guarantee the transnationals slavery. Even more, this policy of defending businessmen is turning its back on the workers of Polar, Punto Blanco, Cerámicas Victoria that despite the lackey policy of the workers' bureaucracy continue to fight for a workers' control of their factories.
Thus, this first of May has only shown that the crisis of the revolutionary leadership (which is none other than the overabundance of treacherous leaderships) has worsened.
The POR and the leadership of the teachers' union correctly declare the necessity of recovering the COB from the hands of the bureaucracy, but without giving this an effective course while actually submitting the manufacturing base to the national businessmen, under the slogan of “defense of the national industry” , their typical Stalinist policy of the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Front (FRA) that calls to relying on a supposedly "progressive" bourgeoisie, which is why they ended up supporting the fascist bourgeoisie of the east in the 2019 coup and its police mutiny named by the POR Loraites as a "popular uprising". Another wing of the currents that speak in the name of Trotskyism, such as the UIT-CI, the LORCI, the MST, among others, are keen to revive the idea of setting up the "Political Instrument of the Workers", which is ultimately an imitation of the FIT-U of Argentina i.e. an electoral hodge-podge to vote "progressive" laws from the bourgeois parliament. However, one cannot forget that such an IPT project has already been experienced in the Bolivian highlands in 2012-2013, when it proved to be a disastrous policy that only served to subdue the Huanuni miners and vanguard sectors, under the direction of the bureaucracy of Trujillo and Solares, to the MAS of Evo Morales in the 2014 elections before giving even one deputy to said IPT.
The mining, manufacturing and health workers, the teachers, housewives and other exploited sectors have not stopped fighting, even in the worst conditions for the standard of daily living not sinking any further; however, to fight in the best conditions, we must unify those who fight, for which it has become decisive to recover the COB, to fight for a revolutionary and internationalist leadership that responds to the daily and historical interests of the proletariat and the poor peasantry. To fight for justice for those massacred in 2019, to put the murderers of the people like Camacho, Mesa and other fascists into prison and prevent them from going unpunished like the murderous Goni of 2003 himself. To be able to fight for bread, work, retirement; to expropriate the expropriators because there is plenty of money to live with dignity but the gas and mineral transnationals take it away.
To defeat the attack of the government, the businessmen and the transnationals… Down with class collaboration! Unity and coordination! Out with the traitors like Huarachi from the leadership of our fighting organizations!
The COB must break with the "pacification" pact that it signed with the MAS and the fascist Media Luna under the tutelage of the OAS and the UN!
For a revolutionary and anti-imperialist COB! A Grassroots Congress of the COB with recallable and rotating grassroots delegates voted in assembly! Let's counter the alliance of the MAS with the Media Luna by setting up a worker and peasant alliance, and resuming our assault with the miner's dynamite until conquering the general strike that the bosses and their Arce government so much deserve.
Rifle, shrapnel, Bolivia does not shut up!
Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores Internacionalistas de Bolivia
Democracia Obrera Bolivia
(Socialist League of Internationalist Workers of Bolivia
Bolivian Workers' Democracy)
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