The day after the Bolivian government announced a new policy increasing its control over foreign natural gas profits, the administration of President Evo Morales suspended the measure in face of intense pressure by the government of Brazil. Working people around the world should condemn the action by Brazil’s government, which serves the capitalist rulers of the largest country in Latin America. It is a big blow to Bolivia’s workers and farmers, who also face as enemies the national bourgeoisie, which is mostly hostile to nationalization, and the imperialist powers in the United States and Europe.

Bolivia is rich in mineral resources. A leading producer of tin, it has the second-largest reserves of natural gas in Latin America. But Bolivia remains the most impoverished country in South America. More than 60 percent live on less than $2 a day. In rural areas, one out of four people have running water and 15 percent have electricity. Bolivia is squeezed by payments to imperialist investors on foreign debt of $4.7 billion, more than half its gross domestic product. Meanwhile, capitalist investors have raked in massive profits from natural gas extraction in Bolivia, whose biggest investors are Brazil’s Petrobras followed by Spanish-Argentine Repsol and French-based Total.

The intolerable conditions facing Bolivia’s workers and peasants have sparked mass struggles over its natural resources and wealth, leading to popular revolts that forced out two previous governments and allowed Morales to win the December 2005 elections.

With heightened expectations among working people, the new Bolivian government announced nationalization of gas and oil on May 1, as well as a land reform and other popular measures. The capitalists—domestic and foreign—have resisted these measures from the start, most recently with a one-day bosses’ “strike” on September 8. The following week, after the decree by the Bolivian government that it would limit the profits of foreign energy companies from their Bolivian operations, Petrobras and the Brazilian government came down on Bolivia like a ton of bricks, threatening to pull out unless La Paz reversed its decision. The Bolivian government immediately backed down.

Through their actions Brazil’s social democratic government, its president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who often demagogically claims to speak for the toilers, and that country’s ruling party, misnamed “Workers Party,” are serving the interests of Brazilian capital by undermining the sovereignty of a smaller semicolonial country and siphoning off its wealth. They are also aiding the efforts by the U.S., French, Spanish, and other imperialist powers to increase their exploitation of Bolivia and the rest of Latin America.

While Brazil itself is a country oppressed by imperialism, its capitalist rulers, like those in Argentina, have long played a major role in plundering smaller Latin American nations such as Bolivia and Paraguay. They have helped maintain the unequal terms of trade that benefit the more developed capitalist countries at the expense of the poorer nations, whose underdevelopment is thus perpetuated. They profit from Bolivia’s landlocked condition, refusing to do anything to support that nation’s historic demand for access to the Pacific coast.

The interests of working people throughout the Americas and worldwide, however, lie in backing the struggles of Bolivia’s working people for national sovereignty, decent living conditions, and dignity. Cuba’s revolutionary government has set an example in this regard with its internationalist solidarity. Cuba has sent volunteer doctors and teachers to aid in Bolivian medical and literacy programs—free, with no strings attached. It has championed Bolivia’s right to gain access to the sea, and has backed the demand for cancellation of the foreign debt of Bolivia and the entire semicolonial world. That is the record of a workers and farmers government.
 
 
Related article:
Brazilian gov’t forces Bolivia to suspend measure on gas nationalization  
 
 
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