Febrero 2013

BOLIVIA

Union elections in the mining district of Huanuni

Opposition list defeats the one of the collaborationist bureaucracy of the COB and the FSTMB

Despite the POR’s policy of conciliation with the official collaborationist bureaucracy, the worker base voting the Green List begins to break up with the government of Evo Morales to stand up and fight with the entire Bolivian proletariat.

The internationalist Trotskyism returns to the mining movement: 600 votes to the Blue List of the vanguard conscious that it wants a revolutionary road to be victorious.

On January 12th this year, 4600 miners from Huanuni attended the Ayacucho school from that district to participate in the union elections to choose a new leadership for the SMTMH (Huanuni Miners Mixed Union). Three lists participated in that election: the Coffee List: FOR (Revolutionary Worker Front), led by the bureaucrat Manuel Pérez, organized and advised by the bureaucracy of Trujillo (COB leader); the Green List: FRS (Union Renovation Front), led by Ronald V. Colque, composed by activists, base miners and POR militants; and finally the Blue List: CCS (Road to the Union Change), in which the comrade “Lucha”, known as “Trotskyist” and a referent for the base miners and the female workers, participated.
4122 workers voted, that is to say 95% of the general electoral roll. The results led to a victory of the Green List, self-proclaimed antioficialista.
The Green List, de postura antioficialista won with 1999 votes (48%). The Coffee List, oficialista, got 1155 votes (28%). And the Blue List which, as it posed before more than 500 workers in the debate forum held the day before the elections, raised a revolutionary program to break with the government, defeat the collaborationist bureaucracy, unite the workers’ ranks, worker and peasant alliance, expropriate the MNCs and fight like the miners from Marikana in South Africa and against the capitalist restoration in Cuba, that is to say an internationalist program and in defense of the Pulacayo Thesis, got 587 votes (14%).
There were 216 (5%) absent voters, 313 invalid votes (8%) and 68 blank votes (3%).

It becomes crucial for the advanced workers and youths that seek a way to the proletarian revolution, to draw the fundamental conclusions from this electoral process that has transformed into a huge political event that anticipates new and superior clashes between revolution and counter-revolution. Drawing fair lessons is what can allow a new revolutionary and internationalist re-group of the vanguard in Bolivia as a kickoff to set up again the socialist revolution in Bolivia and in all America in times when imperialism is leading a brutal counter-offensive in their backyard. We want to share then our first conclusions to open a rich debate and organization process.

The electoral result:
The defeat of the oficialista bureaucracy list, an expression of the beginning of a political process of rupture of the miner base with the “worker” ministers and the Evo Morales government. 

The first question we have to answer is: Why after years of oficialistas leaderships in the Huanuni union and pacts of these leaderships with the Evo Morales government, their list, the oficialista, wasn’t victorious? The collaborationist leaderships have told us for a long time that with the Morales government we would obtain many demands, projects and improvements in mining and that we would maintain our source of work. They promised that if we kept our alliance with the Morales government it would improve not only our quality of life, but of the entire Huanuni population. They also told us that, by pressuring Evo Morales and with the “worker” ministers from the COB inside the government, we would achieve the “nationalization” of the whole mining industry and the “productive system”.

In that way they imposed to us a number of collaborationist congresses and resolutions, as it was the last XXXI Congress of the FSTMB in Potosí, held under the auspice of the “worker” ministers of the COB, accomplices of the Morales government, and with the entire COB collaborationist bureaucracy led by Mitma, Solares and Montes himself. A Congress which deepened the subjugation of the miners on one side with double chains to the Morales government and from other sectors to the feet of the mining MNCs bosses.
Proof of this is that the collaborationist bureaucracy advised by the POR-Lora, made the attendants vote in support of “anti-imperialist” Khadafi (that murderer of workers in Libya on account of imperialism) against the revolution that the working class and the poor masses from Libya and the entire North Africa and Middle East were starring. Their excuse was that they supported Khadafi “against imperialism”, when Khadafi, as Evo Morales, chatters against imperialism but was his most loyal servant and guarantor of the national plunder and the super-exploitation. Today, the POR says the same about the genocide Bashar Al-Assad in Syria who already has to his credit more than 300,000 workers, youths and children murdered by his army and his genocidal caste of officers on account of imperialism, since he is the best agent that imperialism has ever had against the heroic revolutionary masses that resist in the worst conditions in that bloodied country.

It was thanks to this class collaboration policies that subjugated the Huanuni miners to pressure Evo Morales to “nationalize the mining industry”, that the mining movement wasn’t able to intervene in the last general strikes against the Morales government, as before they couldn’t intervene in the struggle of the factory workers from La Paz (2009/2010), who faced Montes and the treacherous COB bureaucracy with plain dynamite.

They thus prevented the miners from leading the revolutionary strike of 09/28/2011 and command the poor peasants from the TIPNIS who faced the MNCs, the government and its plunder highway financed by the French Total and Petrobras.
Neither could the miners be part of the health teachers, students and workers’ struggle, who held 52 days of general strike to prevent Morales from imposing a direct attack to their conquers by imposing an increase of 8 hours of work.

The bureaucrats Solares, Montes and Mitma, and now Miguel Pérez, told us that “we could save ourselves” alone in Huanuni, without breaking up with this government. Thus, the COB and FSTMB collaborationist bureaucracy has been supporting the Morales government, preventing us the miners from being the ones who define the defeat of Morales government in the streets, taking up again the path of the revolutionary combats of 2003-05 as the only way to conquer our demands, as we historically have done.
However, what the result in the past union elections reflects is that us the miners are drawing the conclusion that the things haven’t improved at all. That the crisis is already hitting, the inflation keeps increasing... and the mining projects that each year the leaders that take over the leadership of the union and the FSTMB bureaucracy promise? NOTHING!

The Huanuni miners are then drawing the conclusion that the leaders from the COB and the FSTMB have lied to us this entire time, that we haven’t achieved anything with this government. Nothing has improved and on the contrary, everything is getting worse and worse. The subjugation to this government servant of the MNCs that the COB bureaucracy imposed to us, is what paved the way for the government and the cooperativist bosses to divide the miners’ ranks and confront the base miners over-exploited by the cooperativists with the salaried miners from Colquiri so that, over this base and the blood shed by the miners –like Héctor Choque- the cooperativist and MAS bosses together with the MNCs will negotiate the royalties and incomes from the plunder of the mining. While the rest of the working class keeps paying the costs of the crisis with layoffs, miserable salaries daily eaten by the inflation, and with thousands of workers and youths without jobs or even the right to a decent education or even less to decent health.

The Huanuni miner vanguard has to finish breaking up with the government of Evo Morales to stand up to fight again

After great struggles, defeats and counter-revolutionary pacts and expropriation of the revolution, the mining movement, before coming out to fight, begins to draw conclusions, learns from the past and from the partial defeats that the bureaucracy imposed to them, searches for new leaders for the coming combats, begins to break up with the Morales government and pushes again to defeat the COB collaborationist bureaucracy.
The victory in Huanuni of the Green List, antioficialista and composed by POR militants (historical left-wing supporters of all the COB collaborationist bureaucracies), is an expression of a tendency towards a turn to the left that has begun and needs a revolutionary leadership to be able to develop and transform into a revolutionary alternative for all the working class.

This can be explained because we the Huanuni miners didn’t become “collaborationists” because we decided so at our own will. We the Huanuni miners were always the revolutionary vanguard of the working class and the poor peasants in Bolivia. We were the ones who fiercely fought against the bourgeoisie and the government of Goni and C. Mesa and left our martyrs in the revolutionary combats in 2003-05 together with the exploited from the untamable El Alto. We opposed resistance to the class collaboration government of Evo Morales when he was assuming the power expropriating the revolution and subjugating the worker organizations to the state. 
We can’t forget the fierce combat that we the miners gave in 2007 and in that way, in struggle against the murderous government of Morales and the enslaver cooperativist bosses sent by his minister Villaroel, conquered five thousand jobs for the base miners from the Cooperatives that now are unionized in Huanuni, when before that there weren’t more than 800 salaried miners.
And precisely because this battle that we the miners from Huanuni won (and in which we left more than 4 martyrs) could transform us into the revolutionary leadership of the proletariat; as were the unified miners in the ’52 revolution; it is that we received a hard treason and stabbing from the back from the COB leaders, to prevent this perspective from happening.

In this way, what the bourgeoisie and the Morales government, with hard repressions, weren’t able to achieve, the defeat that the cooperativists and the government couldn’t impose to the miners in the class war; was imposed by the COB bureaucracy, with Solares at its head in 2006, holding a real trap behind their backs... let’s remember, he sent the miners to a roadblock asking for retirement and salary and inversion to the mine and padlocked the tunnel where the dynamite to face the government repression was stored. Thus Solares –as later was done by Montes in Caihuasi in 2008- sent the miners to block the route unarmed. Then the Morales government attacked and the true story is that Solares delivered the miner movement unarmed so that the Bolivian army beats us and send us back in underwear to the mine. This terrible humiliation from the government to the miners was filmed and then broadcasted in all the TV media so that the entire Bolivian proletariat sees it and serves as a lesson.

Today this untamable worker mining movement, a thousand times betrayed, is awaking again. The combat of the Colquiri miners that were fighting against the Cooperativist bosses, rekindled the ashes of the fire that the Evo Morales government and the COB and FSTMB collaborationist bureaucracy are trying to put out since 2005. The fact is that as long as the miners keep even a hair subjugated to this government, as long as the collaborationist leaderships keep being entrenched in our struggle organizations like the COB and the FSTMB, the Huanuni miners will have latent the danger that the Colquiri tragedy threatens to extend to Huanuni. And the Huanuni miners knows very well what this is about. 

The bourgeoisie is terrified of the Huanuni miners standing up to fight again. The fact is that the Bolivian proletariat is strong not for its numerical weigh (the reformists from the POR claim that the Bolivian proletariat is weak for its low number), but it is a powerful proletariat for its role in the production, because it can close the key of the hydrocarbons with which the industry works in San Pablo Brazil, part of Argentina and the copper industry in Chile. For that reason the imperialism and the bourgeoisie is afraid of this proletariat and its vanguard standing up again.
And that’s how it is, since, before the acute and terrible economic crisis that has already begun to mold the situation in the entire Latin American continent, the servant governments, the “bolivarians” as well as the ones from the FTA, already command ferocious attacks against the entire working class to make them pay for the costs of the crisis. The bourgeoisie and the imperialism have terror of the miners because they know that with them leading the exploited and the poor peasants and with the revolutionary general strike, they are setting up again the revolution and the combats of 2003-05 which were expropriated from us by Morales and his farce of “bolivarian revolution”. They know that the Latin American revolution can be stood up again, at times when the crisis and the counter-revolutionary pacts that the “bolivarians” imposed with Obama to keep “stable” the US backyard and so deliver the Colombian resistance and finish seating the capitalist restoration in Cuba, are hitting.

A REVOLUTIONARY POLE OF THE MINEWORKERS VANGUARD HAS BEEN SET UP IN HUANUNI
With the program and the political struggle raised by the Blue Slate, to which almost 600 vanguard miners voted in Huanuni, a revolutionary Vanguard Pole has been set up with the program of the Trotskyists, the Fourth International and the Pulacayo Theses. This revolutionary pole was very clear and forceful; it spoke up denouncing that all the demands, the mining projects, the defeat of the fraudulent government act about pensions, etc. were impossible to conquer unless we broke beforehand with the Government of Evo Morales. Precisely about this the Pulacayo Theses speak very clearly:
"Fight to the death against class collaborationism", state that the working class should never support any bourgeois government, or give it "working-class" Ministers who end up as accomplices of the bourgeoisie. The pole set up by the Blue Slate and its voters reaffirmed that until today the miners or any sector of the working class or poor farmers nothing have achieved through the partnerships with the Government of Morales and his MAS.
From this small revolutionary pole that was set up by the Blue Slate we told the mining proletariat that it is highly necessary to also oust the collaborationist bureaucracy of the COB and FSTMB, for their doings are the cause that we are so bad. This polo said very forcefully that we cannot tolerate one minute more the subsistence of these leaders within our parent organizations. The vanguard pole said that we need and have a responsibility to call the fighting workers to join the poor farmers of the TIPNIS fighting against the transnationals. That we must return to welding the Alliance of miners in the streets with the poor farmers, with the manufacturing workers, the brave students, etc. to whom, thanks to the leaderships of the COB and FSTMB, we have left them alone in the fight.
And the pole raised to the miners in Huanuni that it was urgent to unify us in a same struggle with the Colquiri mineworkers to firmly combat and evict the collaborationist bureaucracy from our glorious COB and FSTMB so that we can all the mines together, fight the same combat as we did in Huanuni in 2004-06 in which we defeated the cooperative bosses and the Government; in such a way we could win over to our side the super exploited base workers of the cooperatives.
We are the revolutionary pole which stated that we must unify the worker ranks, calling all the base miners of the cooperatives, the miners who do not exploit other miners, to organize themselves in the Mining Federation to fight together for founding once more the COB of the ‘52 revolution with its armed worker and peasant militias, under the revolutionary program of the Pulacayo Theses to enforce the nationalization without compensation and under the control of all the mine and hydrocarbon workers in the way of seizing the power for us toilers. This revolutionary pole called on all miners to regroup around a program: the Pulacayo Theses, and a leadership to fight until the end and succeed.
This revolutionary Vanguard pole is which strives to unify the labor ranks and never let again occur the tragic events of the Colquiri. It is formed by all those who want to be the vanguard of the whole of the working class and poor farmers to confront the transnational imperialists and their servile governments as this of Evo Morales. From this revolutionary pole, we call the Huanuni miners to take the path of struggle that the miners of South Africa Marikana indicate, who defeating their Stalinist treacherous leadership COSATU set up their struggle committees, called all miners from the region to unify the fight against the transnational imperialists and the Zuma Government, and won the class war getting 1500 dollars of wage increase from the slaveholding employers. This is the path of struggle to succeed, to defeat the bureaucracy of the COB and FSTMB and thus conquer our most pressing demands: to have decent wages, dignified health care for all workers and free education for our children.
From this revolutionary pole, we call all miners to regroup, to get it back to stand up the vanguard mine workers of Bolivia to recover the revolution we were expropriated by the bosses and the treacherous leaderships, and to call the whole Latin American proletariat plus in particular those American workers who dared to stand up to the cry of 'they are 1% of ' imperialist parasites”, to unify our combat continentally to defeat all the pro imperialist Governments and their covenants with the imperialist butcher Obama, to expropriate the transnational looters of our Nations and smash the capitalist restoration that they want to impose on Cuba.
We call on the revolutionary miners and workers to regroup around this program to prepare the next struggles that come; to put back on its feet, re-founding it, our beloved FSTMB and glorious COB under the legacy and program of the Pulacayo Theses, as in ‘52. This revolutionary pole that has been set up and is humbly at the service of the fight for putting again the seasoned miners in Huanuni with their dynamite “puppies” at the head of the whole of the exploited, in the first place the poor farmers, to defeat this Government and crush the transnational imperialists. To call all workers and exploited in the Americas to break all subordination to the pro imperialist and servile governments of the native bourgeoisies and to put up urgently a Continental Congress to launch a continental fight against the MNCs and imperialism. To defend the only conquest still alive of the Latin American and world working class which is the Cuban revolution, that is been surrendered to the voracity of the capitalist monopolies by the "Bolivarian" as Chavez and the Castros. And to defend the Colombian resistance which is being massacred after the Chavez-Obama-Santos and Uribe covenants. We must crush the capitalist restoration in Cuba! Down with the counterrevolutionary covenants and the farce of "Bolivarian" revolution! Down with the Jackal Bashar Al-Assad that commands genocide against the Syrian exploited masses on account of imperialism!
We call the winning Green Slate, influenced by the POR that break with the 31st Congress of the FSTMB and its resolutions. We call them that they break with the collaborationist bureaucracy of the FSTMB; let’s fight together to defeat the collaborationist leaders. Call just now a permanent general Assembly of the entire rank and file! Let’s set up a true body of recallable delegates with mandate, subject to the decisions of the rank and file! Down with the compulsory conciliations and arbitrations! Out from our unions and central the bosses’ regulations! Hands off the worker organizations! Down with all the bourgeois laws that regulate how we workers have to organize: we organize ourselves as we please! Enough of collaborationist bureaucracies and the labor aristocracy! Down with the compulsive dues discount! That all the union officials collect Union dues directly from the rank and file base in the mouth of the pits. Enough of millionaires and lifetime leaders in trade unions! For leaders who earn the wage of an average worker and that after having fulfilled its mandate, go back to work! For revolutionary and internationalist leaderships in the unions and workers organizations! That the winning Green Slate already call a general Assembly of all the rank and file to vote for this program. You have the floor.

LTI – BOLIVIA

The working class and its vanguard, the miners in Huanuni, need and deserve a revolutionary and internationalist leadership for success.

For years the miners in Bolivia have shielded in their fights and with their blood the Pulacayo Theses, i.e. the program of the Fourth International to lead the proletariat to seize the power. This program became blood and bones in the depths of the shafts and marked as with a red-hot iron the mining proletariat which was the vanguard in the Bolivian revolution of ‘52.
The Renegades of Trotskyism as the POR and those who destroyed the Fourth International of Leon Trotsky, renounced taking power and therefore get rid of such a program, stamping on it a thousand times. Since then the Bolivian POR devoted itself to putting the Pulacayo Theses at the foot of any bureaucrat they had to bless as "Trotskyite" or "revolutionary" in the COB, since for them the bureaucracy is not a matter of money, perks and material privileges, but an "ideological" problem!! and that is why they have been giving "courses and lectures" to “Trotskytize” the traitors, thus denying the Transitional Program which establishes a program for unleashing a political revolution and the war inside the working class organizations to oust the collaborationist bureaucracy.
The reformists separated the revolutionary program from the workers and very badly did the working class for this reason. Huanuni miners are now trying to return to that path of struggle, that program. Ultimately, they do not seek the POR because they think that they are going to succeed thanks to it, but because the POR uses to attribute to itself the monopoly of the program of the Pulacayo thesis, which they use to contain the fights of the miners. The miners vote the POR because what they are seeking for is the revolutionary program, the Pulacayo Theses. The class collaborationist COB bureaucracy and Solares at its head, held by the Renegades of Trotskyism, have called for setting up a “political instrument of the workers” (IPT for its name in Spanish), not to defeat Morales and take power, but to save it and bring the workers who break with Morales to the siding of the 2014 elections. We Trotskyists affirm that the miners in Huanuni and the Bolivian working class do not need an IPT, but expunging these collaborationist leaders from the COB and re-founding it as in the ‘52 to put in place the power of the exploited. To succeed, the Latin American and world working class need the leadership they deserve, that it is none other than the Fourth International re-founded with the program of its Foundation in 1938.