Bolivia

The Summit of the Peoples on the climate and the rights of Mother Earth, which met in Cochabamba (Bolivia) from 20-22 April, at the invitation of President Evo Morales, was an enormous success. Thirty thousand participants discussed for several days the various facets of the climate crisis and adopted a series of very interesting documents, from a resolutely anti-capitalist standpoint. - read article...

“The birth of a new climate movement” is how radical Canadian writer, Naomi Klein, described the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba at the end of April. The meeting had been called by Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in response to the collapse of intergovernmental climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December. - read article...

Michael Löwy pays tribute to the historic Bolivian Trotskyist leader Hugo Gonzales Moscoso, who died in January 2010. - read article...

Hugo Gonzalez Moscoso, historic figure of the Fourth International in Bolivia, died in January. We publish this short notice now and will come back to a longer appreciation at a later date. - read article...

Following its long and rich debate on the resolution "Climate change and our tasks", the Sixteenth World Congress adopted a motion outlining its orientation to the Cochabamba summit on climate. - read article...

Is the revolutionary process going forward in Bolivia, or is it stalled? How do the actions of the Morales government shape up against the president’s professed hostility to capitalism? - read article...

The political and class polarisation in Bolivia is developing very rapidly as a result of the right-wing ’strikes’, the struggles over the Constituent Assembly and the nationalisation of the gas, and now with the bloody conflict at the Huanani mine. - read article...

Monday, May 1, 2006, amidst celebrations and marches commemorating the day of the working class internationally, the Bolivian government nationalized the country’s hydrocarbons sector (natural gas and oil). - read article...

We obviously do not yet know what this new experience of a party in power that has come from social movements, will lead to. Nevertheless, Morales clearly distinguished himself from Lula da Silva and Tabare Vazquez. - read article...

On Sunday December 18th, 2005, there was no demonstration of joy in the streets of La Paz, nor in its rebel suburb, El Alto, source of the popular uprisings that successively ended the terms of office of two presidents in two years. However, it really was a historic evening that Bolivians were living through. - read article...

I was in Bolivia when the presidential mandate was transferred to Evo Morales. I was invited by comrade Evo. An atmosphere of revolutionary process floated in the air and imbued the people. It could be seen by the numbers who assembled and by the revolutionary fervour of people on the occasion of the big rallies. - read article...

Following the victory of Evo Morales and the MAS Herve Do Alto sends us his first impressions of the new MAS government. - read article...

"The time has also come to put in place a government of the poor by the poor, with a presence of indigenous people that is no longer a caricature..." - read article...

In this article, written before the electoral victory of Evo Morales and the MAS, Remberto Arias deals with the question of the unity of the Bolivian Left. He recalls the sort-lived Unity Pact of March 2005, which involved the whole Left, including the MAS, and outlines the National Workers’ and People’s Summit, due to be held in January 2006, involving forces that are critical of the MAS. - read article...

After his unchallengeable victory in the presidential election of 18th December, the leader of the Bolivian peasants and indigenous people, president of the Movement towards socialism (MAS), Evo Morales, was interviewed in his campaign headquarter in La Paz by our correspondent in Bolivia, Herve Do Alto. - read article...

Jeffery Webber argues that the sceptics - leftists who are pessimistic about the prospects of Evo Morales leading a radical, reforming government - are probably right. - read article...

Evo Morales, leader of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), won the December 18 presidential election with surprising ease. With 51% of the vote - more than 15% more than the polls predicted - Morales won outright on the first round. But what is the MAS? What does its victory mean? - read article...

Felipe Quispe is one of the decisive leaders of the Bolivian indigenous movement and of the Left in general. He is widely seen as being more militant and uncompromising than Evo Morales. This interview by Herve do Alto took place before the election. - read article...

Sociologist, political analyst, ex-leader of the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK) along with Felipe Quispe at the beginning of the 1990s, and very much present in the media, Álvaro García Linera is the newly elected vice-president of Bolvia. He did this interview with Pablo Stefanoni for Inprecor, our French-language sister journal. - read article...

On Sunday December 18th, in a historic victory, Evo Morales, candidate of the left-wing MAS, became the first indigenous president in Bolivia’s 180-year history. Someone who in the course of his life has been a lama breeder, a trumpet player and a coca grower, became, on this 18th of December, the first indigenous person to accede to the office of President of the Republic in the whole of Latin America. - read article...

Jaime Solares has put the Bolivian Workers Confederation (COB) back on the map, and made it once again a significant force in the workers movement and the array of radical social movements in general. What attitude will he and the COB now take to Evo Morales? - read article...

In an article written on the eve of the election Paolo Stefanoni traces the political developments which resulted in the May-June 2005 uprising in Bolivia, the subsequent political agreement and the eventual election of Evo Morales. - read article...

The second phase of Bolivia’s gas war, part of the prolonged struggle by the county’s poor and indigenous people against the theft of their natural resources, has begun. - read article...

The first round of Bolivia’s second gas war has concluded with the resignation of President Carlos Mesa and the promise of new elections. For the moment the mobilisations have been called off. There is everything still to play for. - read article...

A new book on the water struggle in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba casts new light on a key battle, and raises fundamental questions of strategy for popular struggles. - read article...

In this interview, Quispe relates the experiences of struggle of the Bolivian peasant-indigenous movement and outlines the demands of the Pachakuti Indigenous Movement. - read article...

Our articles on the floods in Pakistan have given details of how to send financial aid to the Labour Relief Fund. If it is more convenient for you, you can also send funds through the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres account. - read article...

Pakistan is facing worst ever floods of its history. Torrential rains have unleashed flash floods in different parts of the country since last three weeks. Water levies broke leaving the people exposed to flood water. More than 12 million people have suffered due to these floods. More than 650,000 houses have collapsed, mainly in villages. Thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed due to flood water. Houses, live-stock such as cattle’s and goats, household goods, clothes, shoes and other items have been destroyed. Residents of villages are currently without drinkable water, food, shelter and in need of clothes. In particular, the situation is dire for children and women and they are in desperate need of food and clothing. Disease is spreading fast in the areas affected due to lack of drinkable water. In particular, flu, fever, diarrhea, cholera have been noted and are spreading. - read article...

An unexpected, unthinkable, yet - concerning current circumstances - quite expectable and natural thing has occurred yesterday night. Three public social activists that have always expressed a consistent antifascist attitude and shunned civil indifference have been detained. - read article...

We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...

Under the impulse of the World Bank and international capitalist institutions, the Moroccan regime started a privatization process of the universities and attacks against the right to studiy. The announcement of the “Emergency plan” to the university at beginning of the academic year, i.e. of the brutal aggravation of these attacks, put a spark to the powder. The class-struggle trade unionists of fight, organised within the UNEM, are at the forefront of the mobilization against the “Emergency plan”. - read article...