Bolivian People Demand Nationalization of Gas, Reform
of Electoral Process and a Constituent Assembly
Eduardo Rodriguez, formerly the
chief justice of the Bolivian Supreme Court, was sworn in as interim president
on June 9, the country’s third president this year.He was sworn in following the resignation of
Carlos Mesa and the refusal by the leaders of both houses of Congress to accept
the post.
The Bolivian ruling class is in
a deep state of crisis: Mesa himself was forced
out of office by the massive political protests that have shut down most of Bolivia since
mid-May.The protestors have two main
demands: the nationalization of Bolivia’s
natural gas resources and national elections both for Congress and the
President and for the creation of a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the
Bolivian Constitution.Most of the
protestors are also calling openly for a socialist system.
President Rodriguez has promised
elections will be held by the end of this year, which has won him some temporary
support from protest leaders, including Evo Morales, the Aymara Indian who
leads the country’s Movement Towards Socialism party
(MAS) and finished a close second in the presidential elections in 2002.Morales and others have made it clear,
though, that nationalizing the country’s natural gas industry remains an
immediate priority.
The
now-deposed Mesa,
who was himself elected after the collapse of his predecessor’s neo-liberal
government, had promised to hold a referendum on the question of natural gas.He followed through in 2004, but excluded nationalization
as one of the options on the ballot, leading to a mass boycott of the
referendum campaign.Despite this, Mesa claimed victory and
tried to ignore the growing pressure for nationalization.
The pressure
grew out of a previous struggle, which began in 2000 in the city of Cochabamba and was
successful in preventing the national government from selling off part of its
water system to a subsidiary of the U.S.-based multinational company Bechtel.
The Bolivian ruling class has
been left extremely vulnerable by the fact that 20 years after the country
adopted a series of neo-liberal economic policies with the promise of “short-term
pain for long-term gain”, the standard of living of
the majority of the people has actually fallen.The centrepiece of these reforms was the privatization of the natural
gas industry, on the pretext that it would create employment and tremendous
prosperity for all Bolivians.All three
of the country’s major political parties, elected one after the other since
1985, promoted these neo-liberal policies and are now left with nothing but the
empty threat that nationalization will somehow only further harm the Bolivian
economy.Reacting to the initial
movement for nationalization, Congress pledged to increase taxes on natural gas
companies operating in the country, but even this tame proposal was greeted by
howls of outrage from these companies.
Instead, the few Bolivians
profiting from the private extraction of Bolivia’s
natural wealth have consolidated their power in the southeastern city of Santa Cruz, at the centre
of the country’s oil and gas producing region.From there, they have led a campaign for “greater regional autonomy”,
which would include control over all regional resources.Mesa had been
in talks with some of the Santa Cruz
leaders over holding a regional referendum on the issue, which would have in
essence destroyed any hope for nationalization.This triggered the massive protests.
In response to Mesa’s resignation, these Santa Cruz leaders have pledged to hold a
referendum on autonomy on August 12 with or without the approval of the central
Bolivian government. If such a referendum is held, it is bound to arouse
massive opposition in the rest of the country.
Bolivia – The Poorest
Country in South America
Bolivia
is the poorest country in South America, with
around 75 per cent of the population living in poverty, including 30 per cent
living on less than the equivalent of $1 per day, which the United Nations
describes as “abject poverty”.Of all
the South American countries, Bolivia
also has the largest indigenous population, with nearly 65 per cent of the
country’s 9.1 million inhabitants coming from one of the country’s two major
indigenous groups: Quechua and Aymara.Both the Quechua and the Aymara are part of the Inca nation.Over 90 per cent of Bolivia’s
indigenous people live in poverty.
Leaders of the
mass movements involved in the protests have pointed out that their current
struggle for the nationalization of natural gas resources is a continuation of
the struggle that began over 500 years ago when the Spanish colonialists first
began the rape and plunder of their country’s natural resources. Many
protestors refer to the silver mines of Potosi,
which the Spaniards plundered at the cost of thousands of indigenous lives,
removing all the wealth they extracted for the benefit of the Spanish
aristocrats.The foreign companies today
exploiting Bolivia’s natural
gas (the biggest being Repsol from Spain) and other natural resources
are no different than those first colonial oppressors, they say, pointing out
they too simply steal the resources that belong to the Bolivian people.