By Alberto Giovanelli

Yesterday, at the head of mining workers, factory workers and teachers, protests deepened throughout the country. The Government tries to answer with repression but has been defeated in the streets of La Paz and El Alto by a popular resistance that made the police and military forces retreat.

The workers’ and peasants’ alliance besieges the government and today there are more than 80 blockades in place with a tendency to continue growingThe workers’ and peasants’ alliance was strengthened with the incorporation of popular sectors headed by the Neighborhood Councils of El Alto and the Confederation of Self-Employed Workers. The grassroots raised the slogan “Rodrigo Paz out! The incapable government must resign!

The ruling party has lost all strength and legitimacy to call for any negotiation. The power of the rich, of the oil companies and agribusiness, of the banks and oligarchs, of the intervention of the U.S. and its puppet government is challenged with energetic force. This movement objectively becomes an insurrection of the exploited and oppressed majorities.

The government entered the disaster zone too early and entered an accelerated erosion of its legitimacy.

The country once again enters a terrain of “duality of powers”. Once again we see the existence between a bourgeois state (restored by Paz) and a popular power that resists to obey.

In sum, the Government preserves the state apparatus, but very disorganized and weak; the trade unions recover their capacity in the streets together with social, neighborhood and even university youth movements that objectively occupy the center of the board. But also on the right, Tuto Quiroga tries to capitalize on the wear and tear, while the popular unrest multiplies without a single leadership.

The union leaderships themselves draw conclusions after having made a pact with the government in January, on that occasion after the agreements they received implacable criticism from the peasant bases that began to disown their leaders; representatives of the Omasuyos province attacked with blows the car in which the executive of the workers’ parent body was, even the COB had to publicly criticize itself and that is why today they are demanding Paz’s resignation without any kind of conditions.

The bases of the COB with the workers’ and peasants’ alliance demonstrate that they have enormous strength and can give formal character to the dual power that exists in the streets.

Hour by hour, minute by minute, as the mobilization increases, it is becoming clearer that it is possible to defeat the whole imperialist and interventionist offensive of the U.S. and its puppet government. It is possible not only to fight for economic demands, but also for the political power of the institutions of the working class. Power to the workers and peasants alliance. Concretely, the next period is to make conscious the struggle for the government of the COB, peasant organizations, neighborhood and youth organizations.

For this reason, while we declare the general strike until the fall of the government, we must at the same time prepare the workers’, popular and peasant program to solve the crisis in direct opposition to the neoliberal program that Paz is applying.

Bolivia’s GDP is the product of the work of the exploited and oppressed majorities. Those who absorb the vast majority of the profits of that wealth are not the working class that produces it, but the oligarchy, bourgeoisie and imperialism. That banking, agro-industrial, landowning, pharmaceutical and oil elite, who do not intend to pay a penny of the crisis, put the extracted profit in financial shelters abroad. This is not to contribute, but to plunder. It is necessary to establish a hard tax on these plunderers, to recover the wealth of their own work at the service of the country and to develop the monopoly of foreign trade, a superior plan of development in the hands of the authentic workers, peasants and popular government.

General strike until the fall of the government!

Popular and democratic assemblies for workers and peasants to debate the alternative government plan!

For a government of those from below, those who have never governed, the COB, the indigenous communities, the peasants, the youth, the neighborhood councils!