In Another Vein
Dávila, Soñia
THE SUNNY PLAZA OUTSIDE LA PAZ'S SAN Francisco Church is a favorite spot for friends to meet, a picturesque colonial landmark with vendors and shoe-shine boys near the bustle of the downtown...
...From its founding in the wake of the popular revolution of 1952, up to 1985, the COB wielded greater influence over national political life than any other Latin American trade union movement...
...The COB shut down the country for 24 hours, and succeeded in getting them all rehired at substantially higher pay...
...The committees have become an important mechanism for channelling protest against the NEP, leading civic work stoppages in various parts of the country to bring attention to regional needs and the defense of natural resources...
...The overwhelming importance of coca-both for the Bolivian financial system and the overall stability of the economy-fails to penetrate the policy debate in Washington largely because any discussion of coca is confined to the narrow realm of drug control policy...
...Right now, we're at an all-time low in our capacity to mobilize and take action...
...Specific criteria were drawn up to establish the relative weight of each sector...
...The COB, meanwhile, was overwhelmed by the size and diversity of the protest movement...
...The glossy reports they produce to justify new loans and credits rarely even mention the word coca...
...Miners' wives protest in La Paz's Plaza San Francisco...
...Meanwhile, across town from Capitol Hill, at the InterAmerican Development Bank, the IMF and the World Bank, Bolivia's debt service record, export earnings, inflation levels, and economic growth rates are carefully tabulated...
...Former Mining Housewives Committee leader Julia L6pez agrees...
...In an attempt to woo foreign credit and investment, the Bolivian government ran a special advertising supplement in the New York Times in early May...
...We've had some help: the Methodist Church donated a couple of stoves and the Oil Workers Union has given us food supplies...
...6. Pablo Ramos, "Consecuencias de la Politica Econ6mica sobre el Movimiento Popular," inAndlisis, No...
...Tens of thousands struck, 3,000 went on a hunger strike, and once again a state of siege was declared, with hundreds arrested and 146 leaders interned in jungle camps...
...COB leader Oscar Iturri maintains that 80% of the work force does not belong to any party...
...Amazonian indigenous groups and other lowland native peoples, traditionally members of the COB, have created new autonomous organizations which stress ethnic and territorial demands...
...Others are migrants from rural areas who are becoming proletarianized...
...This is not the first time the COB has had to adapt to political change...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12A laid-off miner searches through tailings for tin-rich rocks to sell back to the state company at "Siglo XX" mine In 1987 forty labor federations and confederations were affiliated to the COB...
...Compodonico notes that, "The IMF's neoliberal recommendations for exchange rate policy coincide with the government's need to capture dollars from the drug trade...
...In the meantime, other movements emerged which are essentially different from traditional trade unions, presenting an additional challenge to the COB's hallowed role at the fore of the opposition...
...10unionized workers in state enterprises were fired, and laws were modified to permit the same to occur in the private sector...
...Now that the informal sector is numerically the next largest, should it have greater representation...
...The miners were not the only sector to suffer the impact of "relocation...
...Although the austerity-induced impoverishment of the work force helps fuel the coca trade, in 1987 the World Bank's Bolivia officer called that nation "a country that for the first time is functioning in an orderly and logical manner...
...The COB had been instrumental in leading the resistance to the dictatorship and reinstating a hard-won democracy...
...Guillermina Espinoza left the Matilde mine with her five children when her husband lost his job after 18 years...
...Swinging between the conflicting pressures of workers, private business and international creditors, the government provoked a wave of bitter opposition from all quarters...
...Voters seeking a firm hand to restore control and put the country back on its feet gave Victor Paz Estenssoro, leader of the once-revolutionary MNR, a fourth term as president...
...Filem6n Escobar remains optimistic...
...But the union intervened and said we had to wait, that we should all go together...
...But, he warns, "several prominent economists have argued that...any downturn in the coca-cocaine economy could have grave consequences for the continued success of the New Economic Policy...
...He was clearly referring to the political power of the COB...
...We were desperate, we had no food to put on the table," reads the collective testimony of the Housewives Committee from the mining center Siglo XX...
...I worked in a glass factory for ten years, and before that I was a miner for twenty...
...In Another Vein This article was translated by Susanna Rance...
...This provoked a 24-hour general strike which was only moderately successful...
...I wasn't all that active in the Matilde Housewives Committee, but here there's no other way-we have to organize to get through this...
...Others place the value at between $400 and $500 million...
...The chaotic dispersion of the labor movement and the break-up of cross-sector alliances cost the COB dearly...
...Bolivia is the second largest producer of coca in the world, behind neighboring Peru...
...8 In 1987, "proletarians" were cut to 56% and peasants rose to 16%, while others remained the same...
...8. Ibid...
...Our affiliates followed the COB's leadership, going on marches and protests against the UDP regime, whether or not they belonged to one of the governing parties," points out Oscar Iturri...
...When the factories...
...Hugo Banzer (1971-1978), they took up the cause of political decentralization to promote greater regional autonomy, but came under the influence of political bosses linked to private business interests...
...Now that the miners are no longer in the forefront of the struggle for social justice, we feel this role falls to us," he says...
...Plaza San Francisco is also a place that evokes powerful images and memories...
...At the July 1987 COB congress, Juan Lechin was blamed for the UDP's fall, and he stepped down after 35 years on the executive board...
...2. Jorge Lazarte, Movimiento Obrero y Procesos Politicos en Bolivia (La Paz: EDOBOL, 1989), pp...
...We have to present sectoral demands," insists CSUTCB leader Juan de la Cruz Villca...
...3 L ESS THAN A DECADE AGO, THECOB SEEMED indestructible...
...But even though I lost my job, I haven't given up the union struggle...
...On September 1, miners struck to oppose the austerity measures, joined a few days later by factory, oil and transport workers across the country...
...On October 4, the government agreed to negotiations, and the general strike came to an end, though the state of siege remained in force until December 19...
...24-25...
...The interior minister stated explicitly that decentralizing state mines would necessarily cause mining unionism to fall off...
...Miners work some state mines as cooperatives while the government awaits a buyer 5N~fl-1.Z address the current reality...
...Eight of these were classified as proletarian, two were said to represent peasant farmers, and the remaining thirty were termed middle-class: professionals, self-employed, cooperative members, students, intellectuals and others...
...The COB's strength came from its ability to unite not only organized labor, but also a myriad of popular groups with varying identities and demands...
...Thousands of REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Soilia Ddvila is a Bolivian sociologist who lives in La Paz...
...People take note of how many marchers we can rally, or how much we can change government policy...
...Our work is more effective when workers fight for their own interests, rather than general ones...
...Itembodied a vision of a just, egalitarian society and defended national interests in the face of corrupt regimes which looted the country's resources...
...When strikes and marches failed, workers and peasants used massive road blocks and occupations...
...Through the neighborhood committees, migrants from rural areas have brought to the cities the tradition of community organization around local issues," he says...
...As planned, these measures boosted Bolivia's foreign exchange reserves, which in turn helped stabilize the currency and stop hyperinflation...
...Bolivia's eastern plains have seen the rise of a similar phenomenon...
...According to sociologist Jorge Lazarte, "The revolution became an essential part of society's hidden identity, and this identity was inextricably linked to the COB...
...They made us come back in the pouring rain, they had us waiting a whole week...so we had to call the Housewives to another meeting...
...Such qualitative criteria for classifying members and leaders has given rise to innumerable disputes...
...One hundred forty three strike leaders, including 70-year-old COB founder Juan Lechfn, were imprisoned in Amazonian internment camps...
...The case of peasant farmers deserves special attention, as does the situation of the self-employed...
...Marches, work stoppages and hunger strikes proliferated to such a degree that they lost their former impact...
...For Washington, Bolivia has become a showcase of what other countries in the region could accomplish if free market principles are allowed to run their economies," says political scientist Eduardo Gamarra...
...8 (La Paz: CEPROMIN, September 1987), p. 17...
...New laws prohibited official inquiries into the origins of all wealth brought into Bolivia, and tellers at the central bank were not allowed to question the source of dollar deposits...
...Mining women organized in Housewives Committees were among those who challenged the unions' authority when faced with the catastrophic situation of their husbands' sudden dismissal...
...Report on t4 AmerieA4 Bolivia running...
...The UDP "experiment," with its legacy of hyperinflation, alarming food shortages and the fragmentation of the Left, led to widespread disillusionment and a sharp swing to the right in the 1985 general elections...
...The movement never limited its actions to salary or other immediate economic concerns...
...In 1974 the peasant farmers of Tolata and Epizana resisted General Banzer's move to freeze the prices of agricultural products by tying up the roads of the entire region...
...U.S...
...Neither hunger strikes nor general strikes were able to block the government's radical restructuring of the economy U.S...
...During the dictatorial regime of Gen...
...Secretary General Oscar Iturri is not so sure...
...Peasant farmers, the largest group numerically, had 13%, and the remaining middle-class sectors, including the self-employed, had 25.5...
...Countless State Department reports and congressional hearings document in painstaking detail the number of coca processing labs destroyed andcocacrops eradicated in order to show "progress" in the drug war...
...But the COB wasted no time making the fragile government a fresh target for protest and opposition...
...5 (La Paz: EDOBOL, 1988), pp...
...Events moved very quickly in the fall of 1985...
...During the state of siege, the government laid off thousands of workers in public administration and state mines, policies it termed "rationalization" and "relocation...
...We've formed a group of five women to take turns cooking for all our families," says Guillermina...
...Since they are now 'free' and independent, without a clear worker-employer relationship, they tend to pursue personal interests...
...19, 1986...
...In 1982, progressive leader Hernfn Siles Zuazo triumphantly returned from exile to take up the presidency brutally denied him and his center-left UDP coalition during two years of corrupt military rule...
...There would be open protest and violence...
...The Bolivian cocaindustry employs approximately 75,000 families and, in a ripple effect, leaf production has created another 175,000jobs unrelated to the coca business...
...Though Bolivia's free market cheerleaders are silent about coca, the future of its much touted economic model will continue to be closely tied to the fate of the coca export industry...
...Even the National Peasant Farmers' Confederation (CSUTCB), which represents most of the Bolivian work force, has lost faith in organizing around global strategies...
...Free contract" was an element of the liberalization policies which gave employers liberty to hire and fire at will, enabling them to dispense with the most active unionists...
...It followed the government's decision to break up and defeat the labor movement...
...Acute insecurity and instability eventually forced the UDP to call for early elections...
...Today one hears only the noise of traffic and the murmurs of people going about their daily business...
...We knew that the smaller the gap, the greater the influx of dollars...
...If the plaza is muted now, it is not due to dictatorship as before, but to the economic policies of the democratic regime...
...According to Samuel Doria Medina, an economic advisor to Bolivian president Jaime Paz Zamora, coca generates roughly $600 million for the cash-starved economy-an amount equal to the value of all other exports combined...
...Some renewed the tradition of communal soup kitchens, popular in the worst eras of repression and food shortages...
...In the meantime, otherchannels have emerged for popular organizations disillusioned with the incapacity of the COB and left-wing parties to find solutions to their most immediate problems...
...4. Gonzalo Sdinchezde Lozada, "La Nueva Politica Econ6mica," in Foro Econdmico, No...
...Although the organization's leaders ostensibly recognize the need to reevaluate proportional representation, it is proving extremely hard for them to let go of the "qualitative" criteria which held sway up until the last congress...
...An additional 2.5% was set aside for representatives of the COB's departmental and regional branches...
...In other words, as economist Humberto Compodonico puts it, "In effect, the Bolivian state and the banking system legalized dollars from drug trafficking...
...Moreover, the workers' organization put the last nails in the coffin of the same progressive regime it had sacrificed many lives to reinstate...
...Strong political and economic measures were expected when the MNR took power...
...Without such unity, we would have no strength at all...
...But the harshness of the NEP, introduced less than a month after the new government took power, shocked the country...
...Many have begun to rally around local and sectoral REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 14New Economic Policy was initiated in 1985, the Bolivian government instituted several measures that facilitated the absorption ofcoca revenues into the financial system, including loosening the disclosure requirements of the central bank and declaring a tax amnesty for repatriated capital...
...2 Today the COB is but a shadow of its former self, the intentional victim of the government's New Economic Policy, a radical free-market shock treatment imposed after the crash of the tin market in 1985...
...3. Historian Christian Jettd makes the point that from 1956 on the COB took on the role traditionally played by opposition political parties, as none of the parties were able to counter the MNR's dominance or to challenge military rule...
...soldier and Bolivian cargo handler unload 90 tons of ammunition and explosives for the drug war ing to Flavio Machicado, Bolivia's former finance minister, "If narcotics were to disappear overnight, we would have rampant unemployment...
...The COB's leadership is structured so that the executive secretary is a miner, the second position goes to a factory worker, the third to a member of the railroad workers' union, and so on," explains Filem6n Escobar, ex-miner and the COB's head of cultural affairs...
...Yet it always sought to have blue-collar workers in the leadership...
...In addition, pressures from government policy and the rank and file itself are pushing the COB to become like trade unions in many countries, reducing its scope to the struggle for better wages and working conditions...
...Luckily for the promoters of the Bolivia model, the anti-drug campaign has barely dented the coca trade...
...I see serious problems within the sector of artisans and self-employed...
...The church and its forecourt have borne silent witness to scenes of bitter conflict, violence and euphoria which marked the long history of Bolivia's labor movement...
...Although the government released most of the detainees after a few days, labor was unable to retake the offensive until the following April, when 5,000 workers and students staged a two-week hunger strike against the NEP...
...The upsurge of new social movements which have limited interest in national politics is forcing the COB to reevaluate its strategies...
...AccordPeter Andreas is a research associate at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington...
...The only path left open to us is to oppose the model and fight for its change or removal...
...By keeping a miner at the head of the organization, the COB is presenting a strong challenge to the NEP...
...Bolivian society was to undergo drastic and radical change...
...Now they live in the zone of Rio Seco, a shantytown on the outskirts of La Paz...
...Since the Paz Estenssoro government took power in 1985, factory owners have taken advantage of the new policies to fire union leaders," says Sabino Rodriguez, former leader of the COB's Cochabamba branch...
...Besides overturning the state-oriented economic structure Paz himself had erected in the early years of the revoluVOLUME XXV, NUMBER 1 (JULY 1991) I!Bolivia tion, the NEP was designed to recover governmental authority in national affairs...
...People are desperately looking for some kind of alternative to the current situation," explains Colque...
...A union's degree of "revolutionary and militant tradition," "social awareness" and "solidarity with other sectors," became far more important than its number of affiliates...
...In August, the closing of state-owned mines provoked another general strike...
...RobertoLasema, "Dilemas dela Participaci6ny Concertaci6n Social en Bolivia," in Democracia a la Deriva, compiled by Rend6 Mayorga (CLACSO/CERES, 1987), p. 384...
...Free contract and "relocation" brought significant changes to the composition of the COB's rank and file...
...Bolivian officials who manage the New Economic Policy are equally willing to perpetuate this game of coca-denial...
...I think we need to consider some adjustment in the COB's organic structure...
...Across the plaza flit shadows from the past-hunger strikers in front of the wide church door, marchers dispersed by tear gas and bullets, barricades defended with sticks and stones against the brute force of tanks...
...If we took this step, we'd be accommodating to this economic model...
...Weakened as labor was, another battle over teachers' pay shook the country in November 1989, three months after social democrat Jaime Paz Zamora succeeded Paz Estenssoro as president-and pledged to uphold his economic policies...
...The union movement is in a dreadful state," she says...
...The committees have undergone a radical transformation in recent years, says regional planner Roberto Laserna...
...See Isabel Arauco, "La Relocalizaci6n," in Temas Laborales, No...
...See Christian Jettd, De la Toma del Cielo por Asalto a la Relocalizacidn (La Paz: HISBOL, 1989), p. 70...
...Rather than a strictly economic program, the New Economic Policy is a political plan," then Finance Minister Gonzalo Sdnchez de Lozada asserted baldly in 1985...
...I was a victim of these policies...
...Relocation was not just an economic measure," points out economist Pablo Ramos, now rector of La Paz' s San Andr6s University...
...Even today the organization represents a wide range of economic sectors, ideological currents and political parties...
...T HIS TYPE OF QUESTIONING IS THE TIP OF the iceberg in the COB's present structural crisis...
...Unions representing blue-collar workers dropped in strength and number, and the proportion of middle-class affiliates, merchants and informal workers rose sharply...
...In April 1986, for example, the government fired some 70,000 teachers who refused to accept a $25 monthly wage...
...Many of those now in small businesses and commerce are workers who lost their jobs in mines or VOLUME XXV, NUMBER I (JULY 1991) 13Bolivia COCA DENIAL BY PETER ANDREAS W ASHINGTON'S RAVE REVIEWS OF BOLIVIA'S New Economic Policy almost never consider the country's most important source of revenue and employment: coca, the raw material of cocaine...
...A powerful wave of national and international pressure forced Banzer to capitulate to most of the strikers' demands...
...Even the COB's most fanatical supporters will tell you that the organization has lost its former power...
...The coca industry, the quintessential expression of the marketdriven private enterprise the advertisement so lavishly praises, is predictably ignored...
...Unemployment has since risen still higher, providing a steady source of cheap labor for the coca economy...
...In 1970 the COB was invited by General Juan Jos6 Torres to join his government, a process cut short by another coup in 1971...
...COMIBOL, the state mining corporation, was the hardest hit: Out of a total of 30,518 employees, only 7,275 kept their jobs, leaving 23,243 mining workers and their families in the street...
...I don't feel they have displaced the COB politically-rather, they are our natural allies, and tend to support our actions and strengthen them...
...The men have no idea where the food comes from...
...To cope with the effects of the NEP, people strengthened neighborhood associations, civic committees and the like, primarily concerned not with political action, but with survival strategies...
...The COB is tremendously important to the aspirations of the Bolivian people," says Eddy Salamanca of the Potosi Journalists Union...
...Before, the COB's statements and actions moved everyone in Bolivia," reminisces secretary general Oscar Iturri.' From 1952 to 1956, the COB governed alongside the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) party, maintaining veto power over all policy measures...
...THE SUNNY PLAZA OUTSIDE LA PAZ'S SAN Francisco Church is a favorite spot for friends to meet, a picturesque colonial landmark with vendors and shoe-shine boys near the bustle of the downtown commercial area...
...7 In 1970, "proletarian" affiliates accounted for 59% of congress delegates, of whom a third were miners...
...In the sprawling shantytowns of El Alto, above La Paz, some 180 such committees of local residents work on health care, education, paving of roads, water, sewage and electricity...
...While unions continue to opt for open confrontation to influence or change government policies, these new movements prefer negotiations with authorities to seek basic services or improvements in their immediate environment...
...The state of siege was lifted in December...
...While the official unemployment rate jumped to twenty-five percent, employment in the coca industry tripled between 1980 and 1986...
...Over the past three decades, it has faced periods of radical social change, military dictatorship, and left-leaning reformist rule, continually seeking fresh strategies--and somehow finding them...
...INCE THEN, STRIKES AND PROTESTS HAVE continued, but they rally ever-shrinking numbers...
...The National Institute of Statistics has been criticized in the media for "shrinking" the numbers of jobless from over 20% to 10% of the labor force by redefining the working population...
...Other salaried workers in both state and private enterprises fell prey to what Bolivians call the "white massacre...
...Labor's time-honored policy of presenting global demands and preserving unity, which had been successful in opposing military dictatorship, was far less effective in a confusing political context marked by growing popular anxiety and desperation...
...The COB's strength came precisely from its capacity to represent both salaried and non-salaried workers of different social strata involved in a wide range of economic activities...
...Under the same regime, in 1977, the workers at Siglo XX mining complex countered armed repression by occupying the interior of the mine itself...
...185-186...
...These dollars help boost the country's foreign exchange reserves, which in turn may be used to finance critically needed imports and service the foreign debt...
...Paz Estenssoro once again resorted to force: a state of siege was declared, scores of labor and church leaders arrested, a curfew enforced and inter-city travel banned...
...9. Centro de Promoci6n Minera (CEPROMIN), "Testimonio Colectivo de la Lucha de las Mujeres Mineras," Cuademo de Formaci6n No...
...Unemployment and underemployment rose sharply between 1985 and 1986, but unemployment figures remain shadowy...
...We have to admit that we are in a period of crisis," says Iturri...
...We were set to leave for La Paz, our bags were packed...
...pressure drove the COB out of the MNR fouryears later, months before the coup...
...The two-page spread was filled with graphs, charts, and dozens of quotes from prominent officials applauding Bolivia's economic performance...
...We were bringing the street rate into the official rate by letting the difference between the two disappear," explains former central bank president Javier Nogales...
...The IMF wears equally powerful blinders: When asked how the Fund is dealing with the links between poverty and drugs, a spokesperson responded, "We haven't looked at Juan Lechin Oquendo, legendary founder of the COB and a leader of the 1952 revolution, who stepped down in 1987 after traditional tactics failed to stop the antilabor offensive of former ally Victor Paz Estenssoro issues...
...The author wishes to thank her for her assistance...
...o In eastern rural areas, other important changes have occurred...
...At the last national congress [in 1989]," says Escobar, "the peasant farmers questioned the preference for the proletariat and demanded second place, which was denied to them on the grounds that such a move would mean a radical change in the COB's identity...
...Escobar believes miners should retain their edge...
...For forty years, the miners had been the mainstay of the COB, so a drastic reduction in their number meant a severe weakening of the workers' capacity to act and organize...
...A general strike was declared, and a week later COB leaders voted to extend the strike indefinitely...
...By 1986, six of the nine civic committees had progressive leaders...
...Another 150 leaders went underground...
...5 "Relocation"was really a euphemism for dismissal, since no attempts were made to find new jobs for the unemployed...
...On their arrival in the suburban shantytowns, mining women rapidly adapted to their new circumstances, drawing on decades of organizing experience...
...Could indigenous cultural values be translated into an alternative model for development...
...The first political task," he warned, "consists of restoring the state's authority over society at large...
...51, Afio II...
...While poverty is on the rise, the COB is in serious decline...
...By then the closing of mines had gutted the COB's strength, if not its spirit...
...The COB responded to each new blow with traditional tactics...
...There were some 3,500 strikes in the course of the UDP's three-year term in power...
...There is no way in which official policy can be conciliated with the interests of the COB's vast rank and file," says Victor L6pez Arias, executive secretary of the organization...
...There, broad-based civic committees have long struggled on regional issues...
...People are far more active in the committees now than before, especially with more and more peasants and ex-miners arriving in the poor neighborhoods...
...The COB, and its founding leader Juan Lechin Oquendo, remained a dominant force in the nation's politics even after the 1964 military coup that put a definitive end to the revolutionary period...
...Our popular organizations are becoming completely subdued...
...The coca economy has also cushioned the impact of the New Economic Policy by absorbing many of those left unemployed as a consequence of the government's harsh austerity measures...
...The majority of those in small business and commerce have very limited political awareness...
...Miners and industrial workers have lost the political strength that one time justified their predominance, leading to increasing resentment, particularly among peasants...
...1985), p. 5. 5. Data from the central office of COMIBOL, the state mining company...
...The government refused to budge and, when union leaders began a hunger strike on September 19, President Paz declared a state of siege...
...Hoyv, Sept...
...I count on the COB to lead the struggle to protect the country and its human and natural resources...
...The shouts and cheers of members of the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB), the nation's central union organization, are echoes from a former time...
...See Herbert S. Klein, Bolivia: The Evolution of a Multi-Ethnic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982...
...At its fourth congress in 1970, the COB went so far as to set down principles of proportional representation, to ensure the predominance of productive wage-earners--especially miners-in its organic structure and leadership...
...5 (Sept...
...It's we women who have to worry about keeping our homes VOLUME XXV, NUMBER I (JULY 1991) poverty in Latin America in this context...
...However, its decline began even before the government's 1985 offensive...
...From the start, Siles was unable to marshall his coalition or implement coherent national policies...
...Filem6n Escobar, cultural secretary to the COB and ex-mining leader, recognizes the importance of these local pressure groups...
...Periodic wage adjustments only fed the process and could not keep pace with escalating prices...
...While thousands lost their jobs, those still working were suddenly deprived of the protection of a series of labor laws, hard-won conquests of the union movement over the previous three decades...
...The harsh NEP-induced recession further devastated the labor movement...
...Its aim is to recover the basic principles of republican life without which we run a serious risk of national disintegration...
...Within a week, pickets had joined the protest all over the country, and after twelve days 1,800 people were fasting...
...Bolivia's economy, already suffering after a series of military regimes, entered a downward spiral of hyperinflation accompanied by shortages of basic goods...
...In effect, they are rewarding an economic performance that is intimately tied to the coca export economy...
...That way, the rest have time to go out and look for work...
...After the drastic mine closures, the committees in Potosf and Oruro signed a 'Pact for Survival' which led to mass rallies and demonstrations against government policies...
...David Colque is an activist in the nationwide Federation of Neighborhood Committees...
...Dozens of congressional committees and government agencies endlessly debate how best to attack the coca supply...
...We need to develop new solutions and ideas to Inside a tin mine...
...The demise of Banzer's eight-year dictatorship in 1978 came about through a now legendary hunger strike started by four mining women and their children, demanding the release of political prisoners and amnesty for exiled dissidents...
...1. The Central Obrera Boliviana was founded on April 17, 1952, eight days after the national revolution swept the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) to power...
...Last year, members of Chiman, Siriono and Movima peoples and other ethnic groups held a march to demand cultural, territorial and ecological rights, winning great sympathy and support...
...The government also created a daily foreign exchange auction, called the bolsin, which allowed the central bank to compete with the parallel foreign exchange market for coca dollars...
...The COB broke with the government over IMF stabilization measures in 1956, but COB founder Juan Lechin returned as the nation's vice president in 1960...
...They will return to strengthen the COB, because it is the organization which has always defended them in the past...
...The strike, which also pressed for the reinstatement of political and union rights and the withdrawal of troops from the mines, caught on like wildfire...
...The NEP was designed to destroy the COB," he says, "but those who thought the government could turn Bolivian society around have realized that this model is incapable of solving their problems...
...Within the COB, their struggles had often been subordinated to the demands of the majority Aymara and Quechua peoples...
...p. 17...
...Should it accept this restricted role, the COB may risk losing permanently its former stature as a major actor in Bolivian politics...
...They just demand a meal, without thinking what we're going to have to do to produce it...
...7. Document on the Fifth National Bolivian Workers' Congress, 1979, Central Obrera Boliviana, p. 17...
Vol. 25 • July 1991 • No. 1
