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The government of president Evo Morales ordered the social organisations linked to the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) to mobilise at least 100,000 campesinos and indigenous peoples to the city of Sucre on September 10 with the aim of “retaking the reigns” of the constituent assembly, today grid locked by the debate over the capital.

Moreover, they denounced the involvement of the Embassy of the United States in conspiratorial plans and the financing of advisors for the opposition group, Podemos, in order to destabilise the socialist administration.

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We will defend with our lives the constituent assembly, the unity and integration of the country, the process of democratic change driven by the majority, and the proposals we have presented. We demand the immediate installation of the plenary sessions of the constituent assembly by next week. If not we will see ourselves obliged to take up radical measures in defense of democracy and the constituent assembly, and to change the place of the sessions to another department, without affecting its headquarters.

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Article from Upside Down World, 21 May 2007:Is Washington on the retreat across South America?

[ 30 August 2007: Message edited by: gram swaraj ]

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Bolivian Minister of the Presidency Juan Ramon Quintana accused the United States Monday of paying reporters and columnists to create conflicts in an effort to destabilize the democratic process ...

"US-AID has a program that pays reporters, columnists and consultants to create conflictive scenarios. It’s via this program that they destabilize democracy," said the official.

"We still haven’t divulged this open secret, were investigating […], we are going to identify those who are receiving this money that today is part of the destabilization apparatus," said Quintana.

Last week, Quintana said the $120 to 140 million US a year in US economic assistance via US-AID "is not transparent but discretional and constitutes interference."

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Thre is a very racist angle to these destabilization efforts; democracy is being identified by racist groupings in society by these US-sponsored journalists and media. That's imperialism for ya.

This is all very instructional on an important issue. We have many loud mouthed babblers who drone on and on about "democracy", usually in relation to the right of murderers and terrorists to run for office, subsidized by the USA, in places like Cuba, but who invariably know nothing about how democracy is subverted in capitalist countries, routinely, and, as for example in this case, the will of the Bolivian people is being thwarted in the usual imperialist ways. Democracy is not exhaustively treated by blathering on like a pig about elections and then shutting up when the election results are nullified by the usual nefarious activities of private interests under capitalism.

[end rant]

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They were and are mistakes arising from a lack of knowledge about how to manage the state and from not having prepared ourselves to take power; we have the government, but we do not have the power.

This great majority still does not hold power in our country; power is still held by those who have always had it and, despite the fact that we are an almost absolute majority, we have to make trade-offs, persuade and sometimes even back-track.

But we still have time, we can with some effort come out ahead and implement what we have proposed and I clarify: our proposals, not want we promised simply in order to win elections. ...

No sooner had we proposed to proceed with the constituent assembly, we encountered a thousand and one dodges aimed at averting any progress on our proposal of CHANGE, a change that is necessary for the national majorities that have always been ignored and mistreated. And what happens? The great majority of our constituent assembly members, more or less, have to meet clandestinely in order to get on with its job of changing the country, changing a constitution that was not adapted for all Bolivians but was conceived only in the interests of the dominant classes: those who governed until December 18, 2005 when the MAJORITY, in capital letters, won with 54 percent of the votes. An absolute majority, which left those little scroungers with dropped jaws and a pain they have yet to overcome, spitting worms in all directions. And if it hurts them, let it hurt, they deserve it. It hurts them because it hurts their masters, the ones in the country to the north that they have taken to calling themselves the “guardians of freedom and democracy”. In the constituent assembly they want to impose their proposals on us by minority, they want to remove some of our assembly members; ultimately, what they want is to break up the constituent assembly.

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Bolivia Rising!

And, ominously, just as imperialism has always done and always will do ...

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Because while we are trying to persuade, to dialogue, to reach agreement, they are arming themselves, and they arm themselves for real. The time has come, comrades and brothers, for us to put an end to the extremisms of this right wing that is unwilling to give up its privileges and that are more dangerous.

We see that ammunition is being acquired on the one hand, and nothing is being, weapons are being acquired on the other and we are doing nothing. Are we waiting with folded arms to be killed?

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[ 04 September 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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For Bolivia’s indigenous majority there is no going back. The election in 2005 of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, marked a watershed — a before and after in Bolivia’s history — after more than 500 years of struggle against imperialism and colonialism.

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And today ...

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... a resurgent right wing is determined to destabilise the country and government — even if it means plunging the country into civil war or provoking a violent military coup — to bring down Morales, and with him the hopes and dreams of millions of indigenous and non-indigenous people, not just in Bolivia, but throughout Latin America and the world.

Distribution of racist material inciting people to “bring down this Indian shit”, provoking violent confrontations, holding civic “stoppages” enforced by fascist youth groups, and smuggling arms into the country — these, and more, are ingredients in a conspiracy to overthrow Morales. The public faces of the right wing, centred in the wealthy departments (states) of the east, are the opposition governors and the unelected, business-controlled civic committees — in Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni and Tarija — now openly joined by the civic committee of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca. Behind them stand the gas transnationals, large agribusiness and the US empire, all of whom benefited from ransacking Bolivia’s enormous natural wealth while pushing the country to the position of the poorest in South America.

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Further,

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The central task entrusted to the MAS government was to convoke a constituent assembly in order to “refound” Bolivia, ending injustice and recognising the rights of the previously excluded indigenous majority.

However, more than a year since the assembly’s inauguration in Sucre in August 2006, it is yet to vote on a single article for the new constitution. The same political minority that ruled over the demise of the country today cries out in defence of “democracy” and “autonomy”, with the objective of protecting its political enclaves and economic power and mobilising sectors of the white and mestizo middle classes of the east and west against the government.

The stalling tactics and latest round of violent protests by the right wing, this time in Sucre, threatened the security of the assembly, forcing some indigenous delegates into hiding in order to avoid racist attacks. On September 7 the assembly directorate voted to suspend sessions for a month as it was unable to guarantee security.

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A recent demonstration by 10,000 campesinos and indigenous people marching through Sucre to support the Constituent Assembly has, for the moment, put a stop to the right-wing violence and attempts to incite civil war. But those attempts are unlikely to end.

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Internationally, it is vital for the governments and peoples of the world to voice their solidarity and make clear that they will reject any attempts to trigger a civil war, or an ensuing US/UN military occupation or illegitimate government.

Undoubtedly the US elite sees Bolivia as the weak link in the emerging Bolivia-Cuba-Venezuela “axis of hope” in Latin America. Moreover, Bolivia’s government and the indigenous revolution is helping stimulate indigenous struggles in the region — something Washington fears and will not tolerate.

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The election of Fernando Lugo as Paraguayan president seems to confirm the idea of a new fashion for presidents. The former priest joins the ranks of current Latin American presidents that includes two women (Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina and Michelle Bachelet in Chile), an indigenous person (Evo Morales in Bolivia), a former militant trade unionist (Lula da Silva in Brazil), a radically minded economist (Rafael Correa in Ecuador), a doctor (Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay), a former guerrilla fighter (Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua) and a former rebel soldier (Hugo Chávez in Venezuela).

“Each day the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are electing presidents that look like our peoples and, it’s not just that we look like them, we are the people, we come from the people!” Chávez stated on July 19 in Nicaragua, in a speech to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Revolution that overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.

He was standing next to Ortega — the first Central American president to join the current trend — who had been a central leader of the 1979 revolution and elected president in 1984. Although that revolution was defeated by US-backed counter-revolutionary forces that carried out a violent campaign of terror, and a war-weary population elected a pro-US government in 1990, Ortega was again elected president in 2006.

There is a good chance that El Salvador could join the trend, with the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front — which waged an armed struggle against the US-backed dictatorship during the ’80s — ahead in polls for elections early next year.

This phenomenon of electing governments with progressive credentials of one sort or another, along with the rise of militant anti-neoliberal social movements throughout South America, has led many political commentators to talk about a rising “pink tide” — a general swing to the left.

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For the record, this thread is the fourth in a series about the rising tide of anti-neoliberalism in Latin America. The others were:

I. Latin America Rising

II. Latin America Rising Parte Dos

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This situation in Latin America is totally unprecedented. Not so long ago, under a number of pretexts, a military coup (the most recent of which occurred on 11 April 2002 in Venezuela, against President Hugo Chávez) or direct military intervention by the United States (the most recent of which occurred in December 1989 in Panama against President Manuel Noriega) would put a quick end to any attempt at economic and social reform, regardless of its support by the majority of the country's population. We must remember that democratically elected leaders such as Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, João Goulart in Brazil, Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic and Salvador Allende in Chile, to cite just four of the most famous cases, were toppled (in 1954, 1964, 1965 and 1973, respectively) by military coups backed by the United States in order to prevent structural reforms in highly inegalitarian societies - reforms which would have affected the interests of the US and (in the days of the Cold War, which lasted from 1947 to 1989) brought about a shift of alliances that Washington had no intention of allowing.

In the geopolitical context of the time, the only Left-leaning experiment that managed to survive was Cuba's. But we have all seen at what cost. Pressures and aggressions have forced the country to harden itself in the extreme, and, in order to escape the political isolation and economic strangulation imposed by the United States, to privilege for more than twenty years a none-too-natural alliance with the distant Soviet Union, whose sudden disappearance in December 1991 caused Cuba grave difficulties. Thus, with the exception of Cuba's, all attempts to change the structures of property or to more fairly distribute the continent's wealth were brutally cut short . . . until just a few years ago.

Why is something the United States didn't allow for decades being accepted now? Why can a red (or at least pink) tide wash over so many Latin American states without being pushed back, as it always was before? What has changed? In the first place, one would have to note one extraordinarily persuasive reason: the failure, all across Latin America, of the sometimes quite radical neoliberal experiments of the nineties. In many countries, these policies led to unacceptable and finally intolerable results: privatizations that entailed selling off the national patrimony at bargain-basement prices; massive corruption; brazen looting on a national scale; the massive impoverishment of the middle and working classes; and the destruction of entire industries. Finally, and perhaps foresee ably, the citizens rebelled. In Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Peru and in Argentina, civil insurrections brought down presidents who were democratically elected but thought that once they won the elections they could do as they pleased throughout their terms of office - even, finally, betray their platforms and their people.

Thus, the popular uprising in Argentina in December 2001, which led to the downfall of President Fernando de la Rua, and especially the dramatic failure of the neoliberal policies imposed in the period from 1989 to 1999 by President Carlos Menem, are, in a way, the equivalent in South America of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 in Europe: the final rejection of a dogmatic, arrogant and anti-popular model.

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It's not overly long, and it's well worth a look.

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At an Americas summit meeting in Canada in 2000, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez was the only leader to vote against Clinton’s proposal for an ftaa, while Cardoso, Menem, Fujimori and their colleagues fell meekly into line. On the occasion of his first Ibero-American Summit, Chávez reported, Castro passed him a piece of paper on which he had written: ‘At last I’m not the only devil around here.’ It was thus with some relief, too, that Chávez—himself elected president of Venezuela in 1998—attended the investiture of Lula in Brasilia and Néstor Kirchner in Buenos Aires in 2003, before moving on to that of Tabaré Vázquez in Montevideo in 2004, that of Evo Morales in La Paz in 2006, and in 2007 those of Daniel Ortega in Managua and Rafael Correa in Quito; followed in 2008 by Fernando Lugo in Asunción. Meanwhile the US free-trade proposal that had been almost unanimously approved in 2000 was dead and buried by 2004. Since that date, Chávez himself has been re-elected, as was Lula in 2006; in April of this year, Kirchner was succeeded by his wife, Cristina Fernández, and Lugo triumphed in Paraguay, putting an end to more than sixty years of rule by the Colorado Party.

What is the meaning of this radical reversal, faster than any the continent has experienced before, to give the largest number of progressive governments, whether left or centre-left, that it has seen in its entire history?

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Amid increasingly destructive financial turbulence, South American leaders discussed ongoing plans to create an alternative fiscal architecture for the region. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva hosted his counterparts from Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela in Manaus, the cosmopolitan capital of Amazonas State, near several key tributaries of the Amazon riverine system. Besides the world economic crisis, the September 30 meeting focused on key integration and cooperation accords.

The rhetoric emerging from Manaus was not muted. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez said the financial chaos would wreak the devastation of “one-hundred hurricanes.” He predicted, “The world will never be the same after this crisis. A new world has to emerge, and it's a multipolar world.” Chávez likened the Summit’s purpose to South America’s “decoupling from the wagon of death.”

The other heads-of-state were slightly more hushed. Bolivia’s Evo Morales offered an incisive and populist critique of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout: “In Bolivia we nationalized [gas] for the people to have money, while the United States nationalizes the crisis of the wealthy,” said Morales. “The poor should not have to pay the price of a mess made by the rich.”

Even Lula, far more parsimonious in doling out criticism to the United States, lashed out. Citing the neoliberal austerity measures that Washington and its proxies pushed on Latin American countries for years, Lula said, “Those who spent the past three decades telling us what to do didn't do it themselves.” Despite Lula’s admission that no country is “bulletproof” from the crisis, analysts still suggest that Brazil will suffer far less in the twilight of neoliberalism, and predict a decent 3.5% growth rate for Brazil in 2009 (although they have revised this number downward, weekly, for over a month).

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The Argentine government is expected to announce plans to nationalise the country's 10 private pension funds.

The move will put the government in control of almost $30bn (£18bn) of investments, and is aimed at protecting them from the global market turmoil.

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