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BOLIVIA: 45 DAYS OF STRUGGLE FOR GAS AND POWER - From Econoticiasbolivia.com La Paz, June 15, 2004. - The popular offensive for the nationalization of gas and petroleum, ongoing for 45 days, has become a long siege of the feeble and improvised government of Carlos Mesa, more and more aligned with the interests of the oil transnational companies and the international organisms. The labor sectors harass and press the government, grind it down and reduce its support and credibility among the citizens, but as of yet they haven't managed to corner it, let alone make it collapse. In the last month and means, the Bolivian cities, especially La Paz, have seen several gigantic protest marches of the militants of Central Bolivian Obrera (COB) and have felt the pressure of teachers, manufacturing roadmen, trade unionists and rentistas, that blocked streets and avenues, and marched, sometimes late into the night. In the countryside, the pressure of the farmers and colonizadores, when cutting off the roads of the Plateau and the highways to Peru and the valleys to the north of La Paz, is also felt, every time with more force, although in form still limited and focused in the districts of La Paz, Cochabamba and Tarija. The offensive of the COB, directed by the miner Jaime Solares, is partial and until one week ago it had been maintained by the radicalism of the urban and rural teachers, who maintained a strike of more of a month, convulsing the cities, cutting off access to them and facing the police forces.  Today, the strike concluded, after the partial acceptance of some of the socio-economic demands of the teachers, and the axis of the popular attack has become based on the blockades of the farmers, led by "Mallku" Felipe Quispe. The tactics of the COB are to consolidate the blockades of the Plateau, which is gradually becoming the case, and to cut the roads in the valley of Cochabamba and access to Oruro, Potosi and Sucre, which has not yet been realized. With the forces of the farmers, the COB also anticipates being able to reinforce the mobilizations of masses in the great cities, organizing a new march towards La Paz, this time with the massive support of the populations of Alto and Cochabamba, that are two of four most numerous and important in the country. Because of the struggle of COB, and of the governmental decision to hold a referendum on gas in which nationalization is not included, as 81% of the Bolivian population demands, the towns of El Alto and Cochabamba, with all their social organizations, civic and popular, have been turned upside down against Mesa and his consultation, calling it a swindle. More immediately, the leaders and activists of the Workers Union have paid attention the task of organizing the popular flood of repudiation before the referendum, scheduled for the 18 of July and that has been made in accordance with the interests of the oil transnational companies like Repsol and international organisms like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, those that separately have showed their endorsement and support for the consultation. And they are in full support of it, since president Mesa himself has assured that, whatever the result of the referendum, the Bolivian State will respect all contracts with the oil interests, which guarantees that these will continue to have the real ownership of the reserves of gas and petroleum, and of all the benefits that derive from their operation, for at least the next 36 years. The social struggle has also made it possible for more and more social sectors to understand that the referendum, in spite of the intentional ambiguity of its questions intended to confuse the population, is designed to only allow the choice between maintaining the present antinational hydrocarbon policy of ex-president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, overthrown in October by popular insurrection, or changing this policy to a very similar one, that of the neoliberal Mesa. Both are totally favorable to the transnational companies. In the social and popular unions and organizations, the only ones who defended Mesa's referendum were those in favor of the leader of the coca growers and head of the Movement for Socialism (MAS), Evo Morales, although these forces are already being displaced and ignored by their base. The task drawn up by the COB is to accelerate this purification, and thus to bypass the boycott of the mobilizations that the militants of the MAS were executing from inside the social and popular organizations. The pressure on the bureaucracy that quietly supports the present government and controls several unions and social organizations is intense and is gradually yielding fruit. This is the case, for example, with the so-called Gas Coordinators, led by Oscar Olivera, who until recently had stayed on the margins of the social struggle and had avoided questioning Mesa's policies. Until now, in the battle for gas, president Mesa has obtained, with shades of form but not of content, the endorsement of the Congress and almost all the neoliberal parties that governed with Sanchez de Lozada (with the exception of the rightist New Republican Force), of the Embassy of the United States, the World Bank, the IMF, the Catholic Church, the Armed Forces, the oil transnational companies, the national industrialists, intellectuals and upper middle-class, of almost all the mass media, of the civic committees of Tarija and Santa Cruz and of the MAS of Evo Morales. Without many variants, it is these that governed and supported Sanchez de Lozada, and that today, as in the insurrectionary days of October, they face the forces of the COB of Solares and the Confederation of farmers of Quispe. The COB and the farmers hope to consolidate the blockades and to mobilize the masses to back Mesa into a corner and eliminate his referendum, and advance towards the nationalization of gas and petroleum. Although for that, they will first have to solve serious organizational problems, to overcome the absence of sufficient channels of mobilization, to unify sectoral demands, to obtain the unity of the sectors and populations in the struggle, and to clarify the role of the vanguard sectors (miners and factory workers) and to delineate a strategy for power. However, Mesa and his allies hope, on the contrary, that time and a selective and controlled repression of the conflict will erode the social struggle and open a route to the referendum that will consolidate the power of the transnational companies over gas and the destiny of Bolivia. With the referendum, Mesa and his allies seek to unblock the export of gas and to neutralize the social and popular sectors for a long time. Nevertheless, the fight promises to become more and more to be intense, as the date of the referendum approaches, as the date approaches on which both sides decide the fate of gas and power. Copyright (c)   Econoticiasbolivia.com 2004