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CounterPunch
February
15, 2003
The Sudden Return of Dual Power
Working Class
Revolt in Bolivia
By FORREST HYLTON
Dual power has come to Bolivia most suddenly:
not, as expected, in the form of a coordinated uprising of coca
growers, highland Aymara peasants, and Quechua-speaking peasants
from the valleys under the direction of Evo Morales, Felipe Quispe,
and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the People; instead, high school
students and the working class of La Paz and its satellite city,
El Alto, rose up spontaneously in the largest urban insurrection
since the National Revolution of 1952.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, February
12, students from Ayacucho high school attacked the Presidential
Palace in the Plaza de Murillo with stones, and after the Military
Police shot and killed members of the police's Special Group,
crowds burned the headquarters of the major neoliberal political
parties (MNR, MIR, ADN) as well as a privately-owned television
station, the vice-president's office, the Ministry of Labor,
and the Ministry of Sustainable Development, the last of which
was created under the first Sanchez de Lozada administration
(1993-97). They looted supermarkets, stores, ATMs, the Central
Bank, destroyed a cafe frequented by many of Bolivia's notables,
and burned a car that was carrying the son of the leader of MIR.
In El Alto, rioters burned and looted the water company, the
power company, Banco Sol, the customs office, and the mayor's
office, and on the morning of February 13, they took over the
Coca Cola and Pepsi bottling plants.
The second Sanchez de Lozada administration,
teetering on the brink, has responded once again with a display
of violence, though it does not yet control the proletarian areas
of La Paz and El Alto that voted for Evo Morales and MAS. Armed
with clubs, residents there have organized neighborhood watch
groups to guard against looting and have blocked off main roads
as well as selected side arteries to keep the military out.
As in the National Revolution of 1952,
the police are part of the popular revolt, though it is anyone's
guess as to how long the unity will last. What detonated the
uprising--which has since spread to Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and
could easily reach Sucre--was the violence that the Military
Police unleashed against the police's Special Group, which had
marched peacefully on the Presidential Palace to protest proposed
tax measures that threaten to further reduce their meager $105/month
salaries. By the end of the Wednesday, February 12, there were
more than 100 injured, and the death toll was 18, with 13 in
La Paz and 5 in El Alto, including a young girl. To put this
figure in regional perspective, since Bolivia has just over 8
million inhabitants, a proportionate number of dead in Colombia
would be roughly 95 and in Venezuela, 60. To situate it in national
historical context, the most violent contemporary administration
was that of former IBM executive Jorge Quiroga (2000-2001), which
killed roughly forty people in less than a year. In six months
the Sanchez de Lozada administration is already responsible for
44 civilian deaths.
Since the major TV stations ceased broadcasting
at 7 PM, the first night of the uprising was not televised, but
it was atmospheric: close to midnight, with a dense fog covering
El Alto (the Aymara city of 500,000 above La Paz), people met
in groups of several hundred to discuss strategy, decide on appropriate
tactics, and come up with a division of labor as rumors of an
imminent coup circulated. Human concentrations were strongest
on the bridges in La Ceja and at the toll that separates El Alto
from La Paz. Old women, children over 12, young couples---nearly
everyone participated. The streets, empty of traffic and smoking
from the bonfires that rebels had set, were full of broken glass
and large metal objects like desks, road construction signs and
iron rods. In the hillside neighborhoods of northwestern La Paz
below El Alto, the scene was much the same, except that certain
secondary routes were deliberately kept open to traffic and people
concentrated in smaller groups, with larger groups battling the
military behind barricades in the city center immediately below.
In La Paz as well as El Alto, the army fired live ammunition
and tear gas into the crowds through the day and night.
Because it faced the military's tanks,
bullets and tear gas in the Plaza San Francisco, on Thursday,
February 13, a march of more than 10,000 people was dispersed
within hours. By early afternoon eight were dead and more than
ten injured with bullet wounds from shots fired by army snipers
posted on the rooftops of buildings and in the streets around
the Presidential Palace. One of the dead was a nurse from the
Red Cross who entered a building to help someone who had been
shot.
The lower and middle ranks of the police
who led yesterday's revolt do not recognize the agreement signed
by the government and the leadership of the police in the early
morning of February 13, and have called for Sanchez de Lozada's
renunciation--a demand first voiced by Evo Morales in January.
They did not participate in the repression of the march or the
assault on El Alto's barricades (though the Judicial Police rounded
up looters).
Morales, absent from the march that he
and MAS had called, plans to marshal his forces in Joint Chiefs
of Staff of the People, and though Felipe Quispe is in Mexico,
he returns on Friday, February 14. He and Morales have agreed
that the highland Aymara will join the coca growers in a solidarity
blockade. Though it is impossible to predict anything more specific
than a broad spectrum of possibilities, unless the government
manages to bring the lower ranks of the police into line, and
quickly, the extension of dual power in time and space is one
of the possibilities. More likely, the requisite co-ordination
across regional, ethnic, and class barriers will not materialize
in time to overthrow the government. Whatever the short-term
outcome, however, the question of dual power has arisen again
in Bolivia, and this time not only in the countryside. It will
not likely disappear anytime soon.
Forrest Hylton
is conducting doctoral research in history in Bolivia and can
be reached at forresthylton@hotmail.com.
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