Bolivians Declare a General Strike Against Their President
In Bolivia, the unions representing miners and peasants have declared an indefinite strike, seeking the resignation of President Rodrigo Paz. They are protesting a new law that undermines peasant and indigenous land rights.
Indigenous movements in Bolivia are mobilizing against a land rights law, which they fear could be setting into motion the dissolution of their collective lands. (Pablo Rivera / AFP via Getty Images)
“For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land,” Frantz Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth: “the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”
Marching for over twenty days from the tropics into freezing high-altitude terrain, many wearing nothing more substantial on their feet than plastic sandals, land workers and indigenous representatives arrived in the capital of La Paz this week to defend their territories. They were met by the miners’ union, the Federación Sindical de Trabajadores Mineros de Bolivia (FSTMB), and highland representatives from the peasant union, the Confederación Sindical Única de Trabajadores Campesinos de Bolivia (CSUTCB), in a loud welcome rally of solidarity on Monday.
“With valor, with courage, we have arrived here sisters, arriba las mujeres!” declared Miriam Palomeque, the head of the federation of women peasants in Beni, at the rally.
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