Mass protests sweep Bolivia
Newest challenge to IMF's economic program
By Andy McInerney
A government decision to raise water prices triggered a
mass outpouring into the streets of every major city in the
South American country of Bolivia during the first week in
April.
Demands from different sectors of workers and
peasants--and even from police officers--began to merge into
a comprehensive indictment of President Hugo Banzer's
pro-International Monetary Fund economic policies. On April
8, Banzer declared a 90-day state of emergency to try to
contain the protests.
Demonstrations began April 2 in the Andean city of
Cochabamba. Residents there protested government plans to
raise the price of water by some 20 percent.
Water already costs about $30 a month. For many workers
and peasants that amounts to one-sixth of their monthly
income.
Demonstrators erected barricades across roads and highways
throughout the country. By the end of the week,
transportation across the country was largely paralyzed.
On April 8, soldiers clashed with demonstrating peasants
as the government tried to dismantle the roadblocks. At least
three people were killed in the clashes.
The demonstrations had the backing of the Confederation of
Bolivian Peasants (CCB). CCB leader Felipe Quispe had
announced in March that the confederation would paralyze the
countryside to protest Banzer's agrarian economic
policies.
Many Bolivian peasants--cocaleros--earn their livelihood
by producing coca leaf, a traditional crop in the Andean
highlands. Banzer's government has launched a campaign
against the cocaleros as part of the U.S.-backed "war on
drugs." This campaign has focused on destroying arable land
with poisonous chemicals, but has not addressed the peasants'
needs to make a living in some other way.
Quispe summarized the CCB's demands with a call for a
"true, integral, agrarian development" program.
Workers join protests
The peasant mobilizations, centered in Cochabamba,
received broad support from Bolivia's powerful labor
movement. On April 7, the day before Banzer declared the
state of emergency, the Bolivian Workers Federation
reaffirmed plans for a national mobilization and strike
beginning April 17.
The protests would be aimed at high living costs and the
government's "inability" to solve the people's economic
problems.
In the midst of the peasant protests, police in the
country's two main cities, La Paz and Santa Cruz, struck for
a 50-percent pay increase. Police and their spouses had
staged a two-week hunger strike to highlight their low
pay.
The police strike, coming amid the generalized mass
protests, put the government on the defensive. In La Paz, the
strike turned into an armed confrontation with army
units.
Striking police turned their tear-gas
canisters--traditionally aimed at workers and
students--against the army. Soldiers returned fire with
machine guns.
On April 9, the government capitulated to the striking
police and granted the 50-percent pay raise.
In the hours after the state of emergency was declared
April 8, the government moved to stifle the protests. Union
leaders were arrested. The government restricted media
coverage of the protests.
But the protests did not dissolve. Thousands of peasants
filled the streets of Cochabamba while thousands more were
making their way to the city.
Crisis of neoliberalism
The protests in Bolivia open a new front in the battle
across Latin America against the IMF's "neoliberal" economic
policies. Under these policies, governments are forced to
sell off state industries and impose harsh austerity measures
as a condition for IMF loans.
The policies' professed goal is fostering "healthy"
free-market capitalism in the super-exploited countries
around the world. They have one real aim: to maximize the
profits flowing into the biggest banks in the imperialist
countries.
United States banks have a near monopoly on the profits
generated in Latin America.
It takes police and military force to impose the harsh
restrictions of the IMF and World Bank. Hugo Banzer was
elected in 1997 after promising investors to push forward the
neoliberal economic order in Bolivia.
His word was good with U.S. financiers and generals. As a
general himself, he had headed Bolivia's brutal military
regime from 1971 to 1978, crushing the labor movement.
But while increasing profits for U.S. banks, the
neoliberal economic policies have unleashed a wave of
resistance across the continent.
Bolivia's protests come only two months after mass
mobilizations toppled the president of Ecuador. The
intervention of the military there and dire warnings of
sanctions by the U.S. government prevented that movement from
taking power out of the hands of the pro-IMF clique in
Quito.
The parallels between the new protests in Bolivia and the
recent struggles in Ecuador will force the ruling classes in
both La Paz and the United States to take the growing
movement seriously.
The IMF is facing its most serious challenge in Colombia.
While the Colombian government has desperately tried to
impose its neoliberal model there, its plans have run into
fierce resistance from the masses.
On the one hand, Colombia's powerful union federations
have launched several national strikes against the
government's economic policies. At the same time, the
country's armed revolutionary movements have forced the
government to defend its economic policies in front of the
workers and peasants.
Resistance to the IMF in Colombia is backed by a people in
arms.
Imperialist economics and the corresponding military
interventions are provoking resistance at every turn in Latin
America. That resistance--from Bolivia to Colombia--deserves
the support of the new movement in the United States against
the IMF and the World Bank.
In turn, U.S. activists have much to gain from the lessons
learned by their sisters and brothers in struggle across the
continent.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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