IrisBright
24th September 2008, 22:22
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_art...ls.php?id=14169 (http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=14169)
Bolivian fascists have seized power in five of the richest states in
Bolivia, forcefully ousting all national officials, murdering, injuring
and assaulting leaders, activists and voters who have backed the
national government ? with total impunity. Ever since Evo Morales was
elected President over 33 months ago, the Bolivian far-right has taken
advantage of every concession, compromise and conciliatory gesture by
the Morales regime to expand their political power, block even the
mildest social reforms and paralyze the functioning of the government,
through legal maneuvers and gangs of violent street thugs.
While the Bolivian government has used state repression against peasant
squatters and striking miners, it remained a passive, impotent spectator
to the right-wing seizure of the Constitutional Assembly, the major
airfields in Santa Cruz (forcing the President to flee back to his
palace), suspending all public transportation, federal tax collection
and public investment and projects. Worse still, paramilitary fascist
gangs have repeatedly insulted, beaten, stripped and paraded ethnic
Indian peasant supporters of President Morales through the main streets
and plazas of the capital cities of the provinces they control.
Despite winning nearly 70% of the national vote in the recall election
of August 10, 2008, Morales has not taken a single measure to counter
the fascist seizure of regional power ? continuing to plead for dialogue
and compromise, as the far right gathers strength and prepares to engage
in violent civil warfare against the poor and indigenous Bolivians. The
Bolivian government expelled the US Ambassador, Phillip Goldberg, only
after the US Embassy actively backed the far right's regional power grab
after almost 3 years of open financing and public collaboration with the
secessionists. Since the Morales regime did not break relations with
Washington, it is likely that a new Ambassadorial appointee will soon
arrive to continue Goldberg's active plotting with the far right.
The contrast between the ignominious passivity of the President and the
aggressive violent political putsch of the fascist right is striking.
The centerpiece of the violent uprising and the successful seizure of
fascist power is located in five regional departments: Santa Cruz,
Pando, Beni, Tarija and Chuquisaca, which are grouped in a regional mass
organization, the National Democratic Council (CONALDE). This includes
local prefects, mayors, business leaders and heads of landowner
organizations backed by gangs of armed right-wing street thugs in a
variety of organizations, the most important being the Cruce?o Youth
Union, which specializes in degrading, beating and even killing unarmed
Indian supporters of Morales.
Prelude to the Civil War and Seizure of Power
The civil war and the rightist seizure of power in the five departments
follows a sequence of events resulting in a gradual recovery of
political and social power and the subsequent launching of a
multiplicity of offensive moves from within the governmental
institutions and increasingly through extra-parliamentary direct action.
This has resulted in an escalation from sporadic assaults to systematic
violence against individuals, organizations, public institutions and
strategic economic resources. In this most recent phase, the opposition
has shed its 'legalistic' institutional cover and embraced the violent
seizure of state institutions and openly declared their secession from
the central government, challenging the authority of the government to
govern and to exercise its legal monopoly on police power.
>From Popular Power to Neo-Fascist Seizure of Power
1. The starting point of the secessionist-neo-fascist uprising begin in
2005 when, to all intents and purposes, a mass
worker-peasant-Indian-miner uprising overthrew the incumbent neo-liberal
regime and dominated the streets, presenting all the ingredients for a
new revolutionary government.
2. Under the leadership of Evo Morales and the former NGO organizer,
Garcia Linera and their electoral party, the Movement to Socialism
(MAS), the mass movement was turned from the streets, autonomous
activity and social revolution toward electoral politics. Evo Morales
was elected President in December 2005 and proceded to sign political
pacts with the right-wing parties to share institutional power in
pursuit of a centrist political-economic program. This involved joint
ventures with all mineral-extracting multinational corporations
(excluding expropriations and nationalization) minimalist token land
reform programs (never implemented) and tight fiscal policies (excluding
income redistribution and limiting wage and salary increases to the rate
of inflation).
3. By the middle of 2006, the far Right had recovered from its electoral
defeat and through its presence in the newly elected Constitutional
Assembly effectively maneuvered to block the passage of the new
Constitution. The government focused exclusively on its political reform
agenda, consolidated its joint ventures with all the major gas and oil
multinationals, renewed unfavorable gas contracts with Brazil (paying
Bolivia well below world market prices) and demobilized the mass
movements through the MAS party's control over urban and rural leaders
(with the exception of the miners).
4. Beginning in late 2006 and increasingly throughout 2007, the
neo-fascist right relied on its extra-parliamentary shock troops to
assault pro-government representatives in the Constitutional Assembly,
to organize road blockages and to assert their independence ('autonomy')
from the national government. The Bolivian government rejected any
resort to popular mobilization demanded by the more radicalized sectors
of the miners in Oruro and Potosi. Instead it retreated in the face of
the institutional pressure of the neo-fascist right, offering
concessions on the write-up of the Constitution. Morales made a series
of strategic concessions on the size of land-holdings exempt from land
reform, ceding judicial and fiscal powers to the fascist regional rulers
and conceded control of the roads, highways and plazas to gangs of well
armed neo-fascists.
5. Throughout 2008, the neo-fascist right continued its 'march through
the institutions' consolidating its control over local and regional
government and claims over revenues from strategic economic sectors ?
all of which are located in the contested regions. By the middle of
2008, the right openly asserted their secessionist claims and proceeded
to create parallel police, custom, fiscal and other agencies of
government. The secessionist regime gave license to the business,
landlord and urban middle class elite. Through their leadership of the
self-styled 'civic organizations' and their armed enforcers, they
proceeded to intimidate and assault thousands of government supporters,
peasants, Indian activists, officials and pro-government business
owners, street venders, school teachers, health workers and other public
employees. The neo-fascist strategy for seizing state power was based on
accumulating forces through public demonstrations of power, massive
meetings, and lockouts to shut down urban businesses. Any supporters of
the national government who did not abide by their strike calls suffered
cruel public punishment including beatings and the public humiliation of
Indian and peasant Morales supporters in the urban plazas where they
were stripped and whipped to the jeers of mostly white, European crowds.
>From Protest to Seizure of Power
Having experienced only repeated anemic and inconsequential protests
from the Morales-Garcia regime, in August 2008 the neo-fascists launched
a full-scale blitz, giving free rein and financial and political backing
to a large-scale assault on all major federal installations and agencies
and trade union and peasant association offices in the five departments
which they controlled. They seized control of the airfields denying
landing rights to any government or government-related official,
including President Morales and Vice President Garcia and any visiting
dignitaries.
The trigger event for the launch of the neo-fascist 'civil war' from the
top and the violent seizure of power was the electoral victory of
Morales-Garcia in the August 8 referendum ? where Morales got 67% of the
national vote. The result made it clear that the right could not return
to national power via elections when their only electoral majority was
to be found in the departments they ruled. But even in the 5 right-wing
controlled departments, Morales received approximately 40% of the vote,
a strong minority in the cities and a majority in many rural areas among
the peasantry.
The capitalist class, as elsewhere throughout history, when faced with
even some moderate property reforms, but especially in the face of a
cowardly, retreating and conciliatory regime, has discarded
constitutional methods of opposition. They attached themselves to the
neo-fascist local officials, 'civic' leaders and even the violent gangs
of wealthy youth in Santa Cruz. Morales refused to order the police and
military to defend public buildings in the face of arsonist and violent
assaults, which destroyed public utilities, telecommunications, customs,
accounting, land survey offices, official files and state records. On
the contrary, Morales forced them to withdraw.
In Pando and Tarifa the oil and gas pipelines were blown up, causing
extensive damage and costing millions of dollars in lost state revenues.
Finally on September 11, 2008 over a hundred pro-Morales peasants were
killed or wounded in Pando in an ambush organized by armed vigilantes
supported by the department prefect Leopoldo Fernandez and his followers
in the 'civic' organizations.
The systematic destruction of all signs and symbols of Federal
government authority and the killing and intimidation of peasant-worker
supporters of Morales ushered in the final stage of this 3-year process
of secession, ethnic-racial repression and the imposition of a new
fascist political order.
While the neo-fascist-led civil war proceeded without national
government opposition throughout the 5 provinces, Morales' ministers
adopted bizarre postures: Garcia-Linera rationalized the regime's
impotence by dismissing the seizure of power by the neo-fascist
apparatus of the 5 departments as 'acts of vandals by a gang of 500
thugs'. As Bolivia burned, the Interior Minister Alfredo Rada and the
'Defense' Minister Walker San Miguel vainly tried to minimize the
illegal neo-fascist takeover of almost half of the country with 80% of
the national income by reducing the impending civil war to acts of
'violent delinquent vandalism in different regions of the east and south
of the country'.
On September 12, 2008, Morales apparently oblivious to the massive and
sustained assault and takeover actually convoked an meeting with the
neo-fascist prefects for a 'dialogue without any pre-conditions'. In
other words, Morales absolved them of the massacre and brutalization of
over a hundred peasants and ignored the economic sabotage, which
accompanied their seizure and destruction of oil, gas and other
essential revenue-producing sectors. Needless to say the neo-fascists
met with Morales without conceding a single issue. In fact the only
reason they met at all is because Morales was finally forced to declare
a 'state of siege' in Pando ? subsequent to the killing of 30 peasants
by armed vigilantes under the control of Pando's Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez.
The troops had to clear the airfield of right-wing thugs who had
previously prevented the landing of a government transport plane. The
other 4 departments under neo-fascists control were not affected by the
declaration of a state of siege. In Pando, with the military presence
now guarding public buildings and oil and gas installations, the
government finally decided to arrest the right-wing prefect for his role
in the massacres.
A Turn Toward Good Government?
President Morales finally ordered the US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg to
leave the country after 2 years of direct intervention in the planning,
financing and backing of the organized neo-fascist class warfare and
seizure of regional power. Over $125 million in AID funds financed
almost exclusively the neo-fascist 'civic' organizations and through
them the armed racial vigilante 'Santa Cruz Union of Youth'. Morales'
long-awaited declaration of a state of siege only came about under
pressure of his restless supporters among the peasant and urban mass
movements who began to organize and arm themselves independently of the
impotent federal government. Morales also responded to pressure and from
Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and other countries to end the violence.
Brazil and Argentina were affected by the disruption of vital natural
gas shipments from Bolivia. Even constitutional right-wing regimes, like
Bachelet of Chile and Alain Garcia of Peru, backed Morales and
indirectly pressured him to act for fear of the precedent of a
successful violent right-wing secessionist seizure of regional power
might set for their own countries.
Conclusion
The state of siege and the expulsion of the US Ambassador can be seen as
much-delayed positive moves to reassert Bolivian sovereignty and to
defend the constitutional order. But what next?
The neo-fascists have seized regional governmental power. They still
control 80% of Bolivia's key economic resources. The majority of the
population who live under rightist rule are without the protection of
the central government. Only a few of the oil and natural gas pipelines
have been temporarily secured by federal troops. Morales has relied on
the military to defend his regime, sidelining, marginalizing and
demobilizing the emerging popular mass self-defense movements. The
reliability of the Bolivian Army is not guaranteed. By becoming key to
the defense of the Morales regime against the neo-fascist right, the
armed forces can assume broader powers, as arbiters of the future of the
country. Morales is relatively safe, holed up in the Andes; but his
followers in the 5 departments in the east continue to face the
repressive rule of neo-fascists and their organized vigilante gangs.
Equally important, Morales, faced with violent resistance from the far
right, shows every intention of making new concessions on revenue and
power sharing with the ruling elite. He is open to making even greater
concessions to the one hundred big landowners, media moguls, bankers and
agro-exporters who are pushing for secession.
Repeatedly, over the past 3 years, the Indians, peasants, miners, urban
slum-dwellers and public employees have organized and fought for land
reform, worker-controlled nationalization of the mines and oil fields
and decent salaries and wages. What they have gotten from Morales is a
government of fiscal austerity, economic agreements with foreign
extractive multinational corporations and huge untouchable agribusiness
complexes. Despite having a political mandate to rule, Morales has made
a succession of failed efforts to conciliate with the irreconcilable
economic and regional elites. If there is one lesson that Morales can
learn from the peasants who have been degraded and horsewhipped in the
streets of Santa Cruz, the trade unionists who have been burned out of
their headquarters and homes in Pando and the street vendors who have
been driven from the markets in Tarija, is that you cannot 'make deals'
with fascists. You don't defeat fascism through elections and
concessions to their big property-owning paymasters.
-James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University,
New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser
to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of
Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of
Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006) and Rulers and Ruled
in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007). He
contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at:
[email protected]
Bolivian fascists have seized power in five of the richest states in
Bolivia, forcefully ousting all national officials, murdering, injuring
and assaulting leaders, activists and voters who have backed the
national government ? with total impunity. Ever since Evo Morales was
elected President over 33 months ago, the Bolivian far-right has taken
advantage of every concession, compromise and conciliatory gesture by
the Morales regime to expand their political power, block even the
mildest social reforms and paralyze the functioning of the government,
through legal maneuvers and gangs of violent street thugs.
While the Bolivian government has used state repression against peasant
squatters and striking miners, it remained a passive, impotent spectator
to the right-wing seizure of the Constitutional Assembly, the major
airfields in Santa Cruz (forcing the President to flee back to his
palace), suspending all public transportation, federal tax collection
and public investment and projects. Worse still, paramilitary fascist
gangs have repeatedly insulted, beaten, stripped and paraded ethnic
Indian peasant supporters of President Morales through the main streets
and plazas of the capital cities of the provinces they control.
Despite winning nearly 70% of the national vote in the recall election
of August 10, 2008, Morales has not taken a single measure to counter
the fascist seizure of regional power ? continuing to plead for dialogue
and compromise, as the far right gathers strength and prepares to engage
in violent civil warfare against the poor and indigenous Bolivians. The
Bolivian government expelled the US Ambassador, Phillip Goldberg, only
after the US Embassy actively backed the far right's regional power grab
after almost 3 years of open financing and public collaboration with the
secessionists. Since the Morales regime did not break relations with
Washington, it is likely that a new Ambassadorial appointee will soon
arrive to continue Goldberg's active plotting with the far right.
The contrast between the ignominious passivity of the President and the
aggressive violent political putsch of the fascist right is striking.
The centerpiece of the violent uprising and the successful seizure of
fascist power is located in five regional departments: Santa Cruz,
Pando, Beni, Tarija and Chuquisaca, which are grouped in a regional mass
organization, the National Democratic Council (CONALDE). This includes
local prefects, mayors, business leaders and heads of landowner
organizations backed by gangs of armed right-wing street thugs in a
variety of organizations, the most important being the Cruce?o Youth
Union, which specializes in degrading, beating and even killing unarmed
Indian supporters of Morales.
Prelude to the Civil War and Seizure of Power
The civil war and the rightist seizure of power in the five departments
follows a sequence of events resulting in a gradual recovery of
political and social power and the subsequent launching of a
multiplicity of offensive moves from within the governmental
institutions and increasingly through extra-parliamentary direct action.
This has resulted in an escalation from sporadic assaults to systematic
violence against individuals, organizations, public institutions and
strategic economic resources. In this most recent phase, the opposition
has shed its 'legalistic' institutional cover and embraced the violent
seizure of state institutions and openly declared their secession from
the central government, challenging the authority of the government to
govern and to exercise its legal monopoly on police power.
>From Popular Power to Neo-Fascist Seizure of Power
1. The starting point of the secessionist-neo-fascist uprising begin in
2005 when, to all intents and purposes, a mass
worker-peasant-Indian-miner uprising overthrew the incumbent neo-liberal
regime and dominated the streets, presenting all the ingredients for a
new revolutionary government.
2. Under the leadership of Evo Morales and the former NGO organizer,
Garcia Linera and their electoral party, the Movement to Socialism
(MAS), the mass movement was turned from the streets, autonomous
activity and social revolution toward electoral politics. Evo Morales
was elected President in December 2005 and proceded to sign political
pacts with the right-wing parties to share institutional power in
pursuit of a centrist political-economic program. This involved joint
ventures with all mineral-extracting multinational corporations
(excluding expropriations and nationalization) minimalist token land
reform programs (never implemented) and tight fiscal policies (excluding
income redistribution and limiting wage and salary increases to the rate
of inflation).
3. By the middle of 2006, the far Right had recovered from its electoral
defeat and through its presence in the newly elected Constitutional
Assembly effectively maneuvered to block the passage of the new
Constitution. The government focused exclusively on its political reform
agenda, consolidated its joint ventures with all the major gas and oil
multinationals, renewed unfavorable gas contracts with Brazil (paying
Bolivia well below world market prices) and demobilized the mass
movements through the MAS party's control over urban and rural leaders
(with the exception of the miners).
4. Beginning in late 2006 and increasingly throughout 2007, the
neo-fascist right relied on its extra-parliamentary shock troops to
assault pro-government representatives in the Constitutional Assembly,
to organize road blockages and to assert their independence ('autonomy')
from the national government. The Bolivian government rejected any
resort to popular mobilization demanded by the more radicalized sectors
of the miners in Oruro and Potosi. Instead it retreated in the face of
the institutional pressure of the neo-fascist right, offering
concessions on the write-up of the Constitution. Morales made a series
of strategic concessions on the size of land-holdings exempt from land
reform, ceding judicial and fiscal powers to the fascist regional rulers
and conceded control of the roads, highways and plazas to gangs of well
armed neo-fascists.
5. Throughout 2008, the neo-fascist right continued its 'march through
the institutions' consolidating its control over local and regional
government and claims over revenues from strategic economic sectors ?
all of which are located in the contested regions. By the middle of
2008, the right openly asserted their secessionist claims and proceeded
to create parallel police, custom, fiscal and other agencies of
government. The secessionist regime gave license to the business,
landlord and urban middle class elite. Through their leadership of the
self-styled 'civic organizations' and their armed enforcers, they
proceeded to intimidate and assault thousands of government supporters,
peasants, Indian activists, officials and pro-government business
owners, street venders, school teachers, health workers and other public
employees. The neo-fascist strategy for seizing state power was based on
accumulating forces through public demonstrations of power, massive
meetings, and lockouts to shut down urban businesses. Any supporters of
the national government who did not abide by their strike calls suffered
cruel public punishment including beatings and the public humiliation of
Indian and peasant Morales supporters in the urban plazas where they
were stripped and whipped to the jeers of mostly white, European crowds.
>From Protest to Seizure of Power
Having experienced only repeated anemic and inconsequential protests
from the Morales-Garcia regime, in August 2008 the neo-fascists launched
a full-scale blitz, giving free rein and financial and political backing
to a large-scale assault on all major federal installations and agencies
and trade union and peasant association offices in the five departments
which they controlled. They seized control of the airfields denying
landing rights to any government or government-related official,
including President Morales and Vice President Garcia and any visiting
dignitaries.
The trigger event for the launch of the neo-fascist 'civil war' from the
top and the violent seizure of power was the electoral victory of
Morales-Garcia in the August 8 referendum ? where Morales got 67% of the
national vote. The result made it clear that the right could not return
to national power via elections when their only electoral majority was
to be found in the departments they ruled. But even in the 5 right-wing
controlled departments, Morales received approximately 40% of the vote,
a strong minority in the cities and a majority in many rural areas among
the peasantry.
The capitalist class, as elsewhere throughout history, when faced with
even some moderate property reforms, but especially in the face of a
cowardly, retreating and conciliatory regime, has discarded
constitutional methods of opposition. They attached themselves to the
neo-fascist local officials, 'civic' leaders and even the violent gangs
of wealthy youth in Santa Cruz. Morales refused to order the police and
military to defend public buildings in the face of arsonist and violent
assaults, which destroyed public utilities, telecommunications, customs,
accounting, land survey offices, official files and state records. On
the contrary, Morales forced them to withdraw.
In Pando and Tarifa the oil and gas pipelines were blown up, causing
extensive damage and costing millions of dollars in lost state revenues.
Finally on September 11, 2008 over a hundred pro-Morales peasants were
killed or wounded in Pando in an ambush organized by armed vigilantes
supported by the department prefect Leopoldo Fernandez and his followers
in the 'civic' organizations.
The systematic destruction of all signs and symbols of Federal
government authority and the killing and intimidation of peasant-worker
supporters of Morales ushered in the final stage of this 3-year process
of secession, ethnic-racial repression and the imposition of a new
fascist political order.
While the neo-fascist-led civil war proceeded without national
government opposition throughout the 5 provinces, Morales' ministers
adopted bizarre postures: Garcia-Linera rationalized the regime's
impotence by dismissing the seizure of power by the neo-fascist
apparatus of the 5 departments as 'acts of vandals by a gang of 500
thugs'. As Bolivia burned, the Interior Minister Alfredo Rada and the
'Defense' Minister Walker San Miguel vainly tried to minimize the
illegal neo-fascist takeover of almost half of the country with 80% of
the national income by reducing the impending civil war to acts of
'violent delinquent vandalism in different regions of the east and south
of the country'.
On September 12, 2008, Morales apparently oblivious to the massive and
sustained assault and takeover actually convoked an meeting with the
neo-fascist prefects for a 'dialogue without any pre-conditions'. In
other words, Morales absolved them of the massacre and brutalization of
over a hundred peasants and ignored the economic sabotage, which
accompanied their seizure and destruction of oil, gas and other
essential revenue-producing sectors. Needless to say the neo-fascists
met with Morales without conceding a single issue. In fact the only
reason they met at all is because Morales was finally forced to declare
a 'state of siege' in Pando ? subsequent to the killing of 30 peasants
by armed vigilantes under the control of Pando's Prefect Leopoldo Fernandez.
The troops had to clear the airfield of right-wing thugs who had
previously prevented the landing of a government transport plane. The
other 4 departments under neo-fascists control were not affected by the
declaration of a state of siege. In Pando, with the military presence
now guarding public buildings and oil and gas installations, the
government finally decided to arrest the right-wing prefect for his role
in the massacres.
A Turn Toward Good Government?
President Morales finally ordered the US Ambassador Phillip Goldberg to
leave the country after 2 years of direct intervention in the planning,
financing and backing of the organized neo-fascist class warfare and
seizure of regional power. Over $125 million in AID funds financed
almost exclusively the neo-fascist 'civic' organizations and through
them the armed racial vigilante 'Santa Cruz Union of Youth'. Morales'
long-awaited declaration of a state of siege only came about under
pressure of his restless supporters among the peasant and urban mass
movements who began to organize and arm themselves independently of the
impotent federal government. Morales also responded to pressure and from
Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and other countries to end the violence.
Brazil and Argentina were affected by the disruption of vital natural
gas shipments from Bolivia. Even constitutional right-wing regimes, like
Bachelet of Chile and Alain Garcia of Peru, backed Morales and
indirectly pressured him to act for fear of the precedent of a
successful violent right-wing secessionist seizure of regional power
might set for their own countries.
Conclusion
The state of siege and the expulsion of the US Ambassador can be seen as
much-delayed positive moves to reassert Bolivian sovereignty and to
defend the constitutional order. But what next?
The neo-fascists have seized regional governmental power. They still
control 80% of Bolivia's key economic resources. The majority of the
population who live under rightist rule are without the protection of
the central government. Only a few of the oil and natural gas pipelines
have been temporarily secured by federal troops. Morales has relied on
the military to defend his regime, sidelining, marginalizing and
demobilizing the emerging popular mass self-defense movements. The
reliability of the Bolivian Army is not guaranteed. By becoming key to
the defense of the Morales regime against the neo-fascist right, the
armed forces can assume broader powers, as arbiters of the future of the
country. Morales is relatively safe, holed up in the Andes; but his
followers in the 5 departments in the east continue to face the
repressive rule of neo-fascists and their organized vigilante gangs.
Equally important, Morales, faced with violent resistance from the far
right, shows every intention of making new concessions on revenue and
power sharing with the ruling elite. He is open to making even greater
concessions to the one hundred big landowners, media moguls, bankers and
agro-exporters who are pushing for secession.
Repeatedly, over the past 3 years, the Indians, peasants, miners, urban
slum-dwellers and public employees have organized and fought for land
reform, worker-controlled nationalization of the mines and oil fields
and decent salaries and wages. What they have gotten from Morales is a
government of fiscal austerity, economic agreements with foreign
extractive multinational corporations and huge untouchable agribusiness
complexes. Despite having a political mandate to rule, Morales has made
a succession of failed efforts to conciliate with the irreconcilable
economic and regional elites. If there is one lesson that Morales can
learn from the peasants who have been degraded and horsewhipped in the
streets of Santa Cruz, the trade unionists who have been burned out of
their headquarters and homes in Pando and the street vendors who have
been driven from the markets in Tarija, is that you cannot 'make deals'
with fascists. You don't defeat fascism through elections and
concessions to their big property-owning paymasters.
-James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University,
New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser
to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of
Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of
Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006) and Rulers and Ruled
in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007). He
contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Contact him at:
[email protected]