For Workers Resistance Against Rightist Bolivian Coup

Yesterday, Sunday, November 10, a coup d’état was carried out in Bolivia that has been in the works since the elections of last October 20, and in reality long before that. The trigger for the overthrow of the government was the sinister mutiny of the police, followed by the declaration of the heads of the armed forces calling on President Evo Morales to step down. The “civic-police-military” coup has a pronounced rightist and racist character, directed against the indigenous population which has been the main political base of Morales’ Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS). A key role has been played by fascistic elements sponsored by the ultra-racist Santa Cruz elite. All those who seek to defend the basic rights of working people and the oppressed are now in danger in the face of this reactionary onslaught.

Around Latin America, “center-left” politicians (like Lula in Brazil) are praising Morales, whom the coup plotters want to eliminate. The Mexican government has granted asylum to various members of the deposed government. The capitulation to the coup of the Bolivian president and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, who resigned along with various officials of the MAS, is an expression of the bourgeois character of this party and its submission to the dictates of the Organization of American States (OAS), the infamous “Yankee Ministry of Colonies.” Once again, as in Chile in 1973, we see the mortal danger of illusions spread by populist and reformist leaderships in the “unity of the people” with the armed forces and the police.

We of the League for the Fourth International categorically oppose the rightist coup, fighting for the full political independence of the proletariat from all bourgeois parties and politicians, including the MAS, which has coopted the worker and peasant leaderships and repressed workers who fight back. Against the Bolivian coup, we insist on the need for a revolutionary proletarian policy, fighting for a workers, peasants and Indian government.

At the same time, we call to organize the self-defense of organizations and communities of urban and rural workers, and the indigenous peoples, against the attacks of the rightist coup organizers, which have already begun. Above all, we fight to drive the main authors of coups throughout the continent, the Yankee imperialists, out of Bolivia and out of Latin America.

It is urgently necessary to draw the lessons of this entire experience. To do so, it is necessary to forge a genuinely Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party. Sections and locals of the LFI, its supporters and sympathizers are participating with the following slogans in emergency protests being organized for today:

Against Bolivia Coup
Fight for a
Revolutionary
Workers, Peasants &
Indians Government

Bolivian Workers:
Smash the Coup!

Yankee Imperialism
Out of Bolivia
And Latin America

Against Bolivia Coup
For Revolutionary
Class Politics
No Political Support
to the MAS

For Worker-
Peasant-Indian
Self-Defense
Against Racist
Rightist Attacks