Bolivia on the Train of Life. The Elections and the Social Movements Today

LA PAZ: Nearly three months have passed since the uprising that paralyzed Bolivia last May and June, that brought the government to its knees and forced an abrupt end to Carlos Mesa’s presidency. Four weeks of protests exploded after the approval of the new Hydrocarbons Law, which raised the payment of taxes and royalties from the foreign companies that extract gas in Bolivia. For the people of South America’s poorest nation, this law was unacceptable.

Within a few days, one of the biggest mobilizations in Bolivia’s recent history began to take shape. The coca growers held a week-long march from the town of Caracollo to La Paz (the seat of national government), and trucks loaded with miners began to arrive as well, at the same time that thousands of people from El Alto – La Paz’s radical neighbor – descended into this city in grand marches. The people of El Alto declared a general civic strike that began once again to slowly suffocate La Paz. Hundreds of kilometers away, rocks, barbed wire, and logs where laid down on the country’s few highways, blocking imports, exports, and all travel by land. At the vanguard of these massive demonstrations were the El Alto residents and the indigenous Aymara of the northern highlands, but hundreds of thousands of others – schoolteachers, coca growers, students, taxi drivers, workers, miners – joined in the struggle.