Home World Politics Bolivia Will Evo’s resignation lead to Pinochet or resistance?

Bolivia Will Evo’s resignation lead to Pinochet or resistance?

Details
Published on Tuesday
12 November 2019  16:35
Written by Radical Socialist
Tuesday 12 November 2019, by Martín Mosquera
The coup d’état against Bolivian president Evo Morales has generated the kind of anguish that great defeats of revolutionary struggles evoke: Allende’s fall, Che’s death in combat, defeat in the Spanish Civil War. “Criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion,” Marx once said. We do not have to put aside the sentiments that envelope us today, rather, we must mobilize them for positive ends.
We still do not know the scope of the events taking place in Bolivia, if the revolution can avoid being shot down, if it can escape heaps of dead among the social movements, the indigenous peoples, and the social base of Morales’ political party, the Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS). Evo’s social defenses are powerful and the ruling classes know they will have to break threw them in order to move forward with their plans. The latest news is disturbing – burning houses, persecutions, arrests. More big shocks lay ahead and the outcome is unwritten. El Alto – a one-million-strong, indigenous-majority city close by the capital city La Paz – has a heroic insurrectionary tradition that has brought down several governments in the past. It embodies the traditions of struggle in which Evo himself was trained. I am interested to see what kind of polarization develops among left-wing militants and activists in the face of these facts. The left’s positions are grouped into two major poles. Some are unable to position themselves properly in the fight against the coup because they stick to warnings or slogans that are already out of date. For example, the Argentine Partido de los Trabajadores para el Socialismo (PTS) published an article a couple weeks ago titled: “Neither with Evo nor with Mesa (the right-wing forces). For an independent political solution!” even as preparations for the coup were underway and the government had to be defended. Others defend Evo and renounce their “right to criticize” a government that has just been overturned without a fight, even though it won nearly half of the votes in recent elections. It fell like a house of cards, upending what seemed to be the most stable progressive process in the region. Evo went down to defeat without putting up a fight and that fact forms part of our anguish, and should be part of our balance sheet. We fight to win, and in order to win we must extract the proper lessons from our experiences. What Evo did yesterday, it must be said, is analogous to the actions taken by Juan Perón in 1955 in the face of a coup or those of Salvador Allende in 1973 (and the opposite of what Chavez did in 2002). Obviously these resignations and retreats, like Evo’s, did not prevent any bloodshed, on the contrary they left social and political organizations and movements and the popular classes at the mercy of brutal reactionary violence. The executions of 1955 and Pinochet’s genocide testify eloquently to this reality. Counter-revolutions produce violence, not revolutions. There is no comparing the social and human cost between the two. Evo’s resignation (and that of his vice president Garcia Linera) was based on a belief that there was no other alternative. But if that were the case, it is the result of a naïve policy that was not prepared for a test of strength with the kind of authoritarian reaction that every progressive process provokes on the part of the ruling classes. It is the naivety of “class conciliation.” The lessons of history in this field are incontrovertible – Allende’s example remains too close to us to play with fire in this way. Hopefully, it is not too late to avoid a historic defeat and the liquidation of one of the most notable experiences of the Latin American peoples of the last decades. 11 November 2019 Originally posted on FB. Translated by No Borders News with permission from the author.
RELATED ARTICLES

WSF Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly

Details Published on Sunday 13 February 2011 17:06 Written by Radical Socialist WSF Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly 12 February 2011 As the Social Movements Assembly of the World...

Whither Tunisia?

Details Published on Thursday 20 January 2011 01:43 Written by Radical Socialist Whither Tunisia? Curfew in Tunisia! What is the political significance? January 13 by Fathi Chamkhi Just hours after his...

Tunisia, Egypt: a revolutionary process of world scope

Details Published on Monday 28 February 2011 18:16 Written by Radical Socialist Tunisia, Egypt: a revolutionary process of world scope Fourth International The International Committee of the Fourth International at...

Most Popular

Disposession and Peasant Resistance in Pakistan

Details Published on Thursday 02 June 2016 16:52 Written by Radical Socialist From British India to Pakistan: the journey of dispossessions in Okara and the resistance of...

After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket: thinking through the new and rethinking the old

Details Published on Tuesday 17 March 2015 07:38 Written by Radical Socialist After the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher Jewish supermarket: thinking through the...

Copenhagen Plan B : “protect the rich”

Details Published on Friday 11 December 2009 08:53 Written by Radical Socialist

Greece fights back

Details Published on Monday 02 Feburary 2015 03:38 Written by Radical Socialist Sushovan Dhar   With the build-up of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, the political pundits and...

PSM women hit, told to drink toilet bowl water, change clothes in front of men

Details Published on Friday 08 July 2011 16:03 Written by Radical Socialist PSM women hit, told to drink toilet bowl water, change clothes in front of men Wong Choon...

Historic changes in the support of workers’ parties in Denmark

Details Published on Sunday 15 july 2012 17:03 Written by Radical Socialist Denmark   Historic changes in the support of workers’ parties in Denmark Thomas Eisler   At the end of June the...

Bangladesh left slams Islamist murder of Avijit Roy

Details Published on Tuesday 21 April 2015 18:19 Written by Radical Socialist Thursday 16 April 2015, by Badrul Alam Badrul Alam from the Communist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist-Leninist)...

Statement of the Revolutionary Left Current in Syria: the Syrian regime and the beginning of the end

Details Published on Thursday 30 August 2012 04:13 Written by Radical Socialist Statement of the Revolutionary Left Current in Syria: the Syrian regime and the beginning of the...

Proletarian Heroine: Domitila Barrios

Details Published on Saturday 17 March 2012 04:21 Written by Radical Socialist Remembering Domitila: Making Bolivian History Emily Achtenberg Rebel Currents March 15, 2012 (Credit: Ben Achtenberg, refugemediaproject.org) Bolivians paid tribute this week to Domitila Barrios...

Is Africa rising? A critical perspective

Details Published on Monday 29 December 2014 16:15 Written by Radical Socialist Africa Monday 29 December 2014, by Firoze Manji The popular idea of  Africa Rising  is based...