Bolivia’s new right-wing government was forced to abandon its neoliberal reform package, pushed by executive decree, following the largest mobilization of the nation’s labor movement in at least five years.
“Fuerza, fuerza, fuerza! Fuerza, compañeros!” bellowed a man in a miner’s helmet into a megaphone. Marching through the sun-drenched streets in the haze of noisy firecrackers, thousands of miners, workers, peasants, civil society associations, and indigenous organizations in Bolivia descended on the city of La Paz earlier this month in the biggest social mobilization in at least five years. Beyond the city, road blockades led by union locals brought transport to a near standstill across the country. In the streets, the mantra was “Bolivia no se vende” (Bolivia is not for sale).
The mass protests against the executive decree of newly elected Rodrigo Paz’s conservative government lasted nearly a month. While presented as the elimination of the fuel subsidy, which keeps gasoline prices artificially low, Decree 5503 would have also privatized key natural resources and implemented a wide range of austerity measures.
The impressive display of workers’ might, combined with an effective negotiation strategy by the trade union confederation, the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), forced the government to back down. It announced it would draft a new decree as per an agreement with the unions that opposed the original decree. The fuel subsidy will not return, but the range of other neoliberal policies will be abandoned.
“We can proudly say: ‘Duty fulfilled, Bolivian people. The objective has been achieved, my comrades,’” COB leader Mario Argollo declared after the negotiations.
The victory of the COB shows that while the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) may have been…
Auteur: Olivia Arigho-Stiles
