The future is at stake in Bolivia

Luis Bilbao

Every person with a conscious should be worried and concerning themselves with what is occurring in Bolivia. The United States is on the verge of unleashing a war that would shake the region and which, in the short term, could lead to a state of commotion and belligerence in all of South America.

The excuse is the demand for autonomy by four departments (Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija); the instrument, the oligarchy; the means, mercenaries financed, trained and commanded by the State Department via the CIA and other agencies; the objective, fragment Bolivia, detain the revolutionary process headed by Evo Morales, start a prairie fire in the Southern Cone and create the conditions to attack Venezuela and Ecuador afterwards. Following the events of last Sunday, Paraguay is now also threatened.

The US needs war. The capitalist economy cannot longer continue to breathe without it. Those that believe that because imperialism is bogged down in Iraq, it is unable to open up other combat front are mistaken. In fact, the inverse is true: the only way out for them is to push forward. But they hope to do this by taking a side street, mirroring the line of march in the Middle East: provoke objective fissures of an economic, social, ethnic and religious nature; find latent conflicts; unleash war between factions, place themselves above all this and preside over the mutual destruction of the peoples.

The main difference with that zone, devastated by invasions, internal struggles and the constant war (already the candidate to follow George W. Bush have underlined their disposition to “devastate Iran”), is that in Latin America there exists the embryo of a continental political centre. The governments of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia have taken up the need to confront imperialism in the contemporary world, that is; attacking capitalism at its root.

The emergency meeting held in the early hours of April 23, involving Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and Carlos Lage, in representation of Raul Castro, and the decisions adopted them, are indicative of the fact that this bloc is beginning to act as an international political leadership.

But that is not enough. The parties and organisations that those four governments count on are the revolutionary vanguard of the continent, but they have not yet the reach the level of uniting with the ability to convoke all active workers, peasants, youth and popular sectors from the Rio Bravo to the Patagonia. This is a pending task.

The only road to carrying out this is that these vanguards, in all their dversities, discover the path of the grand majorities and find a way to explain and persuade millions of people of something that is both so clear and at the same time so murky: imperialism, the oligarchies subordinated to it and the vacillating positions of those who hesitate in taking a firm stance towards the White House, are taking as to the abyss of war. We have to stop this. It is necessary to bring together our collective wills, in the broadest spectrum possible, parting from the simple comprehension of this threat.

It is not possible to impede the violence asking Evo to negotiate with the dogs of war provoked by Washington, as the OAS does. We are dealing with the need to unconditionally defend the legitimate indigenous government of Bolivia. Using all the means necessary.

There is an urgent need to convoke meetings in each city of Latin America in order to explain and debate this dramatic conjuncture. Out of these thousands of assemblies should emerge mobilisations and concrete forms for strengthening national and regional ties. We need to be willing to send delegations to La Paz, carry out events, concerts, encounters of all types, in all parts, with everyone who understands the graveness of the moment and behind the single slogan of holding back the murderous hand of imperialism.

Luis Bilbao is the director of the magazine América XXI

Translated from America XXI