YES, we will struggle for a dignified life

bolivia / peru / ecuador / chile | the left | opinion / analysis Tuesday January 27, 2009 20:18 by Oscar Olivera Foronda - Federación de Trabajadores Fabriles de Cochabamba (Bolivia)

Let us struggle for bread, work and housing

The current period of uncertainty, of long queues in the electoral offices, of long queues to register our children at school, of long queues to buy cheap in the local market, of long queues to take a bus, of long queues to get a decent job, of long queues to be received by the “authorities”, of long queues with our wife and kids to fill up the form for social housing that we may never get, of queuing up to reach Heaven… because there seems to be no other possible way to see our dreams come true, those dreams we had during our battles in the streets and roads, in those long years that we have lived and died.

The YES to the new constitution won, as it was expected, but we don’t believe that this last referendum will sort all problems out, like if it was in the ballot box where the answers to our sufferings lay and where the key to our well being is. The YES has to be interpreted as a possibility to keep reflecting, thinking, fighting, hoping… believing… living, so as to create, by our own actions, the life we want to live, the life we have desired so badly those times when we marched down to La Paz, or from San Sebastián, or when we took over the factories and we felt as masters of our own during a strike.

We have also shed tears for many years, in so many places, in the factories, when with contained anger we had to cope with the arrogance of bosses, on the streets, when we had to quietly pay bribes to the cops in order to be allowed to sell on the streets, public squares on the corners, while we hide from some “people”, or when sometimes, in order to force us to stick to the workplace, they let the dogs loose so we can’t even go out for a pee (as the testimony of many women in factories prove).

And our lives are built on the grounds of those daily stories, unknown to those from the upper classes and who don’t even care about them, that don’t feel anything about them, because they are far away, they’re deaf and blind to this people that aims for change, not become bad managers of society, nor to accommodate themselves to the status quo…

Now what we have ahead of us is a new struggle for official posts, for the Senate, for the Deputy Chambers, for the Prefect office, for… our resources, our land, territories with water sources, gas, oil, forests, people.. it is the people that should take definitely into their hands the decisions on our present, so hard and difficult, and a dignified future, so distant, but possible.

For it is the workers in the factories, as part of the people, that together with the men, women, children and old folks from the countryside and the urban centres have to start again to take over the streets and roads, like we did in years 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005. So our space of political action is not reduced to put a piece of paper with a mark that will change nothing, as those from above pretend, now more than ever.

We voted YES because we need a collective change, but our wages shrink every passing day… we voted to kill the large estates (latifundios), but we have not put an end to bosses’ brutality and the semi-slavery to which they have tried to reduce us.

We are visible and we exist only when we organize and struggle, and this is our only way to change things… this is what we have said, this is what we have done, this is what we will do again… let us get ready, mobilize BEYOND THE REFERENDUM, BEYOND EVO, BEYOND OURSELVES.

Cochabamba, January, day of the Referéndum for the New Constitution

Oscar Olivera Foronda(*)
(*) Spokesperson of the Factory Workers Movement of Cochabamba, Bolivia