Manifesto of the Bolivian Fourth Internationalists
The following statement was issued on March 13, 1985, by the National Executive Committee of the Partido Obrero Revolucionario Unificado (United Revolutionary Workers Party, Bolivian section of the Fourth International).
In unity is our strength and our chance to defeat the present government's policy of starvation. Workers, peasants, the poor people, oppressed and exploited: united we have the power to win the essence of our demands. United we have the capacity to take a great step forward in this struggle to take into our own hands the solution of our problems, which are also those of the entire nation.
— The fight for a living minimum wage is a struggle for a fundamental right.
The propagandists in the pay of the bourgeoisie and the imperialists, including Minister Rueda Pena, have the effrontery to claim that the workers are responsible for the crisis, and that they are trying to destabilize the democratic process through their mobilizations underway now. Nothing could be more false or tendentious.
It was precisely the Huanuni miners, through their indomitable struggle, who made it possible to regain the measure of freedom that we enjoy today. These clumsy propagandists should be reminded that the ones who are disorganizing the country are those who are starving the people, those who are driving up the adult and infant mortality rates, those who are trying to destroy the creative and constructive social power of the working class and the toiling masses through
The disorganizers are those who are pillaging the country and ruining its natural and human resources. It is they who are harming the democratic process and not the workers who are coming into the streets today to demand bread and milk for the children.
The question has also to be put to those who claim that the workers do not want elections because they are afraid
What is more important for democracy in the present circumstances, the right to vote or the right to eat? In this context, the fight for a living minimum wage is an integral part of the democratic process. It is part of basic
— The mobilisations today must not be a springboard for deals behind the backs of the people.
The struggling miners, as revolutionists loyal to the workers and people's movement, must retain control of their mobilizations. We cannot, and must not, allow these mobilizations to be exploited by forces alien to the workers
Our struggle must not be used as a lever in maneuvers at the top. No solution, from wherever it comes, that is imposed over the heads of the masses or behind the backs of the workers, can help us.
To block such maneuvers, our unity is essential. It must embrace all sections of the people's camp. We have to discuss together, we miners, industrial workers, peasants, housewives, white-collar workers, students, and politically committed professionals .... We have to move forward in building and consolidating our own instruments of struggle, instruments that will enable us to begin to resolve, by our own means, the problems of the people and the nation.
In other words, it is becoming necessary to build people's councils, committees and other rank-and-file bodies reflecting the self organization of the masses in the fight against hunger and the threat of a return to fascism. But above all, it is necessarv to advance toward the foundation of a Nation. 16 al People's Assembly, which must be transformed into a real people's parliament to promote a program by and for the workers.
- Build the alternative instrument.
However, in order to concretize all this and move forward with the perspective of a genuine workers movement, it is essential to structure a united and effective instrument. is why our party favors speeding up the edifying process that has begun to shape up in recent days. It is an unavoidable responsibility for the revolutionary left as a whole to build this united instrument to bring about the triumph of the people's interests, to reinforce the mobilization, to block the irresponsible maneuvers trying to go over the heads of the masses and make deals behind their backs.
Building this instrument means preparing the way for saying at the same time: "Siles out! No Banzer and no Paz Estenssoro!" Because the problem is not Siles Suazo him-
His departure from the government would not be a solution in itself. The real problem is to get the entire ruling class out of the government, since it has shown its historic incapacity to solve the problems of the people and
The essential thing is to say clearly, the bourgeoisie!"
In thís framework, building a united and effective instrument, based on an anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchical program rooted in the gains of the COB emergency plan and the advances achieved by the peasants, would open the way for the formation of an anti-oligarchical and anti-imperialist government of the workers and the popular masses. Such a government would have to rest on the organized and mobilized masses in order, on this basis, to build a new and free homeland. In this process there would also be room for soldiers and officers who commit themselves to this independent plan advanced by the workers themselves and who integrate themselves into the work of carrying it out.
The program that the workers support and which must become the program for national salvation, has found an initital expression in the COB's emergency plan and in the platform of demands put forward in the present conflict. This program includes demands for state control of the banking system, a monopoly of foreign trade, a living minimum wage and a sliding scale, nationalization of major transport, renunciation by the state of debts contracted by the private sector, nationalization of the middle-sized mines in the private sector, application of the basic agrarian law, and strengthening the Coraca distribution network.
In order to pursue this perspective, it will be necessary to confront the moves of the right, which is trying to take advantage of the power vacuum, either through elections or through a coup d'etat. In the face of this threat, unity of the exploited people, that is of the entire nation, is the primary duty.
This unity must be widened by appealing to the commanders, commissioned and noncommissioned officers, and soldiers not to fire on the people but to join ranks in defense of democratic freedoms and for national sovereignty against imperialism. They must take their place in the struggle of the masses and link themselves to the work of building independent organisations to save our homeland, not just from being torn apart but from being shattered. They must understand that an anti-imperialist and anti-oligarchical government, that is a government of the working people, is the only way out of this crisis.
Given the bourgeoisie's historic incapacity to lead this country, it falls to the workers to take in hand the leadership of the Bolivian state. •
International Viewpoint 22 April 1985