Bolivia, Huanuni - March 11th, 2019

HUANUNI: The ORO Front slate, an imposture and a new scam against the miners

In the elections for a new leadership in the Miners Union, supported by the LIT that traveled to Bolivia, the ORO Front slate proclaimed "union independence" and "proletarian internationalism"

Now, once it won the leadership of the miners union, it is aligned with Evo Morales…
It intervenes the Huanuni mine alongside the Bolivian Armed Forces

 

Much of the bourgeois press (Los Tiempos, Pagina Siete, La Prensa, among others) announced that in the elections of the miners union of Huanuni an “anti-official slate" (i.e., an opposition to the Morales government) had won, which defeated the two slates of the MAS (Morales’ Party) in December 2018. This way, the ORO Front won the union elections. Since the defeat in 2013 of the miners strike for the dignified retirement, which the leadership of the union at that time had imposed, advised by the Partido Obrero Revolucionario (POR), the miners base was submitted to the government of Evo Morales by the MAS bureaucracies of the Huanuni union, the Trade Union Federation of Bolivian Mine Workers (FSTMB) and the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB)  An important group of miners already tired of losing labor conquests the government snatched from them, placed their trust in the ORO front, which proposed fighting for "labor stability", "political independence" against the government, and raised the banners of "proletarian internationalism". ORO Front slate victory was seen by the miners and the rest of the workers as a step forward in the struggle to break with the anti-worker government of Morales and the MAS bureaucracy, in the perspective of regaining union independence to recover their lost conquests.

The International Workers' League / Fourth International (LIT-CI) publicly supported the electoral campaign of that front and after their victory declared in the social networks that: "The comrades of the ORO slate, who won yesterday the elections of the miners union of Huanuni, send a warm greeting to the Brazilian and Latin American working class!"  Thus, after the elections and irradiating joy, in a Huanuni facility, among members of the LIT and the brand new ORO leadership, David Choque (current general secretary of the union) said that "all workers in the world must join forces ( ...) Huanuni has as a union a fundamental base that is the miners revolution.” Ronald Colque (ex-leader of the Huanuni union in 2013) sent a “warm revolutionary greeting to all the international comrades of the LIT-CI”. And workers from Brazil, also called to fight "against capitalism and imperialism." While a member of the LIT sent greetings and ended his speech to the cry of "Long live the ORO Front!" and "Long live the struggle of the working class!". (Published on the Facebook page of the LIT-CI, December 21, 2018)

The official inauguration of the ORO Front in the union leadership together with representatives of the anti-worker government: an act of class collaboration

Days after the victory of the ORO Front, all this perspective of struggle for "union independence" needed by the whole working class vanished. The new leadership of the miners union (ORO) made the act of official inauguration together with the Minister of Mining and Metallurgy, Cesar Navarro, the president of COMIBOL and the chief commander of Huanuni police, in a conciliatory environment where the Secretary of Relations, Whodin Caracila, said: "I want to tell all the authorities (...) especially the national authorities, that Huanuni is their home" (broadcast by Radio Nacional Huanuni). Minister Navarro did not spare praises to the miners using revolutionary phraseology and disguising as a friend of the workers. In addition, the MAS bureaucracy of the COB and the FSTMB were also present (a few days later, in an extended miners meeting, the latter supported Evo Morales and García Linera for the presidential formula of the 2019 elections). That is, a true act of class collaboration with the government of Evo Morales.

The pressing task of fighting for union independence was in the order of the day and within reach of making it effective since the miners base was predisposed. Regrettably, a great opportunity was lost to set up a vanguard pole of the Bolivian proletariat that would call for unifying the ranks of the workers to recover the independence of the COB and the FSTMB by throwing out the MAS leaders, to confront the anti-worker government of Morales and the mining transnationals that are the real jukus (as it steals mineral). A coordinated struggle of the Huanuni unemployed  fighting for decent work, the miners of Ch'ojlla who are more than a year stationed in the vicinity of the Ministry of Labor to have their labor rights recognized, along with the base miners enslaved by the cooperative employers (among them women and children in Potosí to give an example), was thus discarded in the "agenda" of the new union leadership of Huanuni.

Weeks later, like a noose in the neck of the miners, representatives of the Mixed Trade Union of Workers of Huanuni (SMTMH) met with the Minister of miners, the president of COMIBOL, the General Manager of the Huanuni Mining Company (EMH) and the General Commander of the National Police, to agree on the militarization of the mine with army and police troops with the excuse of the jukeo and “to protect the mine” from the "threat" of the unemployed. All this with the full endorsement of the MAS bureaucracy of the COB and the FSTMB.

The deficit scam and the jukeo as excuses to divide the workers' ranks
and militarize the Huanuni mine for a redoubling of looting

For years, the whole of the miners bureaucracy looked the other way and left alone the deficit scam in the Huanuni Mining Company (EMH) that the government was aggravating, making the jukeo responsible, and also the unemployed, whom they now accuse of wanting to occupy the mine and putting at risk the job security of the employees. The current SMTMH leadership also endorsed this scam because it legitimized behind the backs of the base miners, a militarization that costs the workers about one million Bolivians ($ 144,928), as expressed on February 9 by the EMH Manager in a emergency assembly of workers and delegates from the interior of the mine, with the presence of the Executive of the COB, Juan Carlos Huarachi, representatives of the FSTMB and the management of the EMH. In this assembly, which was attended by only 450 workers out of the nearly 1,500 workers in the interior of the mine and 3080 in total in the EMH, one of its resolutions in addition to approving the militarization, proposed: "... reaffirming the law that condemns the jukeo with jail", that is, ratified the bill that was presented by the bureaucracy of the COB in 2017 and approved by the government in 2018, which asserts a sentence of 3 to 10 years in prison to the jukus and sanctions to his accomplices. The resolution by this assembly with endorsement of the SMTMH cynically settled the division of the ranks of the mine workers, between employed and unemployed, thus creating conditions to confront workers against workers, which is a tragedy for the whole labor movement.
It ends up imposing the plan of the multinationals and the lackey government of Morales to divide the workers' ranks to militarize the "unprofitable" EMH and bleed it at a time when the looting of the imperialist transnationals is deepening, as they are the real jukus that stole in 2018 alone a total of 4,000 million dollars leaving 179 million in the hands of the Bolivian state, of which not a penny reached the miners who die in avoidable accidents, much less to the workers as a whole, poor peasants and exploited in the country. A costly militarization that workers must pay with their salary, which today has military drones, surveillance cameras, 90 police officers and 120 uniformed armed forces working in three shifts for the supposed "safeguard" of the mine.
The Armed Forces (educated in West Point) and the police are there to "protect" the businesses and property of the capitalists, crushing the miners when they deem it necessary, as evidenced by the history of the class struggle in Bolivia that bathed in blood the miners districts of Uncía, Catavi and Siglo XX, they are the same ones that murdered Che Guevara and massacred more than 100 exploited in the 2003-2005 revolution. They are the same ones that in the Evo Morales mandate have already killed more than 100 workers, among miners, other workers, poor peasants, and a student.
We cannot allow the militarization of Huanuni! For a General Assembly of rank and fileminers that disavows the agreement between the union leadership and the ministers of the government! Out with the armed forces and the murderous police of Morales and the mining transnationals! Dissolution of the repressive institutions of the bourgeois state! To defend ourselves also from the brutal repressions as it happened in recent weeks with the marches of the unemployed from Huanuni and the miners of Ch'ojlla in La Paz, Let’s conquer self-defense committees to confront the repressive forces of the murderous State!

 

OUT  WITH THE ARMED FORCES AND THE POLICE MURDERERS THAT COME TO GUARANTEE
THE SUBMISSION OF THE MINERS FOR A REDOUBLED LOOTING OF THE MINERALS!

To defeat the militarization of the government and the mining transnationals, we must conquer union independence and fight as in 2006, side by side among employed and unemployed workers

Today the Huanuni miners need more than ever to fight for the unity and effective coordination of the ranks of the workers. Therefore, it has been put on the agenda to resume the experience left us by the revolutionary struggle of 2006, when the ranks of the unemployed, salaried workers and the base enslaved by the cooperative employers who conquered the 5,000 jobs were united: That all the miners who do not exploit other miners organize themselves in the FSTMB! For the immediate incorporation of all the mine workers enslaved by the cooperatives and the unemployed to work in nationalized mining with all the same rights of the salaried miners! Let us nationalize, without compensation and under workers' control, the imperialist transnationals like the Sumitomo (San Cristobal), who plunder the nation! There is the key to conquer One more shift in all the mines so that all the unemployed can enter to work with a living and mobile minimum wage!
It becomes crucial to conquer, then, the political independence of the workers by recovering the FSTMB and the COB from the hands of the MAS bureaucracy. And as the same Pulacayo Theses state: "Any attempt to collaborate with our executioners, any attempt to concede to the enemy in our struggle, is nothing less than a surrender of the workers to the bourgeoisie. Class collaboration means giving up our goals. All workers' conquests, even the smallest, has been achieved after a bloody struggle against the capitalist system. We cannot think of an understanding with the exploiters because we subordinate the program of transitory demands to the proletarian revolution. "(Thesis III, point 2, “Fight against class collaborationism”, our bolds)
What does the LIT say today about the ORO Front that went from proclaiming the struggle for "union independence" to a class collaboration policy with the Bolivarian government of Evo Morales and his anti-worker ministers together with the MAS bureaucracy of COB  and the FSTMB, which agreed to militarization?
Unfortunately, so far, they have not spoken. The current union leadership of Huanuni used the internationalist, union independence and even "Trotskyist" clothing that the support of the LIT would provide. The long revolutionary tradition of the Bolivian labor movement has shown that the bureaucracy needs to speak in the name of the Pulacayo Theses and put on the Trotskyist clothes to have legitimacy before the workers' base and reach union leadership, especially in Huanuni as the leaders of the FSTMB and the COB. With revolutionary phraseology they imposed the worst betrayals and today it weighs on the miners of Huanuni. Has the LIT-CI lent itself to this?
The members of the LIT-CI who came from Brazil, witnessed and were accompanying the ORO front during the elections in Huanuni  cannot keep silent about the union's class collaboration policy. We know that the least they can do is to denounce this militarization that Huanuni's trade union leadership has agreed with the government. We cannot allow that in the name of the combative workers of the CSP-Conlutas of Brazil (influenced and directed by the LIT-CI), a leadership has been legitimized that opened the doors to the armed forces and the police in the miners district since that will cost the Huanuni miners base and all the workers in Bolivia very dearly.
The transnational mining companies take 4000 million dollars of income from Bolivia and leave only 179 million for the Bolivian state. Expropriation without compensation and under workers control of the entire mining industry!
The real jukus, "mineral thieves", are the imperialist transnationals that plunder our nation!

Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores Internacionalistas de Bolivia
(Socialist League of Internationalist Workers of Bolivia)