The wave of protests that has shaken Bolivia since mid-September is fueled by government austerity moves, layoffs, workers’ declining wages, and farmers’ inability to make a living.

A rallying point of the protests is opposition to the government’s plan to allow foreign energy monopolies to export the country’s abundant natural gas supplies at huge profits for the companies but few benefits for working people. Popular opposition to the project is magnified by the plans to ship the gas through a region in Chile that historically has been claimed by Bolivia as an outlet to the sea.

Many businesses were shut down in La Paz, the capital, and schools and universities were closed the first day of the walkout. Tens of thousands of street vendors and university students marched in the streets, calling on Sánchez de Lozada to resign.

Similar mobilizations took place in other cities. On October 1 hundreds of miners paralyzed production in the southern provinces of Oruro and Potosí. Peasant organizations and farm workers have also joined the protests.

The proposed plan to allow three foreign companies—British Gas, Repsol-YPF of Spain, and Pan American Energy—to export natural gas through a pipeline in neighboring Chile has become a lightning rod for the anger at the regime.

Bolivia nationalized many of its natural resources, including oil and gas, in the wake of the 1952 revolution, which brought to power a bourgeois nationalist regime. In the 1990s the government began to open up the country more rapidly to imperialist penetration, accelerating the privatization of state-owned industries. The oil and gas company YPFB is in the process of being sold off.

U.S. and European energy giants launched exploration efforts at a furious pace in the mid-1990s, leading to large discoveries. Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, concentrated in the southeast region around Santa Cruz, are now estimated at 55 billion cubic meters, the second-largest in Latin America after Venezuela.

Imperialist corporations envision turning Bolivia into a giant energy-exporting hub. One project is the construction of a gas pipeline to the Pacific coast of South America that the energy companies could ship to California as a “solution” to the energy crisis while raking in superprofits.

Bolivian government and business figures have sought to win support for the $5 billion project with claims that turning over the gas project to the imperialist companies will bring Bolivia $300 million a year in royalties, or 18 percent of the estimated total profits.

This giveaway has infuriated many Bolivians, who have seen layoffs but few benefits from the sell-off of YPFB.

“We already sold our railways, our airline, our oil, our electricity, and the government said that privatization would make us all better off for it,” retired brewery worker Reynaldo Perdello told the Washington Post.

Two-thirds of Bolivia’s 8.3 million inhabitants live below the official poverty line. Under austerity plans dictated by the International Monetary Fund, the government laid off public employees, cut civil service wages by 12 percent, and raised utility rates.

Coca farmers are also angry at a U.S.-backed drive to wipe out their coca crops without providing an alternative source of income. The average income of small farmers, mostly Indians, is $37 a month.

Adding insult to injury, the Sánchez de Lozada government has accepted the imperialist investors’ proposal to build the gas pipeline to the Chilean port of Patillos. An alternative route through Peru would be more costly to the investors.

This issue touches a nerve in Bolivia. In a British-instigated war in 1879, Bolivia lost part of its territory, including its only port, to Chile. Restoring Bolivia’s outlet to the sea has been a historic demand, not only of that nation but also of the working-class vanguard in Latin America.

“Our fathers and grandfathers died to protect that land,” said Felipe Quispe, a leader of the Federation of Bolivian Peasants and member of Congress representing the Movement toward Socialism (MAS). “The gas belongs to Bolivia,” he said.

The protests were largely initiated by Evo Morales, a leader of the Indian coca farmers, who as the candidate of the MAS was the runner-up in last year’s presidential elections. Morales is seen by many working people as a spokesperson of Bolivia’s indigenous population, in contrast with Sánchez de Lozada, a millionaire businessman who personifies the largely white political establishment.

This is the second time the Sánchez de Lozada government has confronted protests on this scale. Less than eight months ago thousands of workers and peasants erupted in protests against the government’s proposal to impose a new direct tax on wages. Police killed 32 protesters and wounded 200.

Landless peasants organized by the Movement of Landless Peasants (MST) have occupied land and blocked highways to press their demand for promised land and aid.

On October 1 at least one peasant was wounded and three MST members arrested in Collana, 30 miles outside the capital, when soldiers attacked their blockade with rubber bullets and live ammunition. Two weeks earlier troops killed five peasants in an assault on another blockade near the town of Warisata, some 70 miles northeast of La Paz. The peasants were demanding land and tractors.  
 
 
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