Letter: Bolivia: Farmworkers Fight for Survival
Brothers and sisters of Bolivia, today the voice of the countryside rings out louder than ever. The farmworkers are not asking for a favor. They are demanding what has always been rightfully theirs: land to work, water to plant, and respect to live with dignity.
The current struggle of Bolivian farmers is a struggle for food sovereignty and for an economic model that does not leave rural communities behind. For decades, they have sustained the entire country’s food supply through their labor, growing potatoes in the highlands, quinoa in the valleys, and corn on the plains. Without them, there are no tables set in the cities, no markets to fill, no country to sustain itself.
This mobilization is not violence. It is survival. It is the response of those who have historically been marginalized by policies that favor large agribusinesses and interests that concentrate land ownership while small-scale farmers barely survive. When a farmer blocks a road, they do not do so on a whim. They do it because their children have no school, because their harvest is not enough to cover the cost of fertilizer, because the price they are paid for their product does not even cover the effort of their day.
Supporting farmers is supporting Bolivia itself. It is defending biodiversity, native seeds, and the ancestral knowledge that has cared for our land for centuries. It is committing to an economy that does not destroy ecosystems to export raw materials but rather strengthens local production and fair trade.
The state has an obligation to listen, to engage in dialogue, and to build real solutions: access to fair credit, rural infrastructure, fair prices, and protection against unfair imports. Repression is not the way forward. The way forward is to recognize that without the countryside, there is no city.
Today, it is our turn to stand with those who rise at 4 am, those who work under the sun and rain, those who defend Pachamama as a mother and not as a resource. The struggle of the farmworkers is the struggle of all of us who want a more just, more sovereign, and more humane country.
— Physical therapist, daughter of a farmworker of Ecuador
Red Flag responds: Thank you, comrade, for your eloquent and deeply moving letter. For centuries, Bolivian farmworkers and the indigenous population in general—in Bolivia, Ecuador, and other Andean countries—have been at the forefront of the struggle against the extreme exploitation imposed on them by international capitalism.
It is the same struggle waged by billions of workers across the globe for a dignified and respectful life. For a world where human life is the most valuable and cherished thing. For a world where nature and humanity are not callously destroyed by capitalism’s insatiable thirst for maximum profits.
Only by putting an end to that vile exploitation can we free ourselves from all the evils we suffer. And from all the capitalist ideologies that divide us, weaken us, and often pit us against one another.
Only by putting an end to wage slavery— the material basis of that vile exploitation— can we be free workers and live in peace and harmony. This requires a communist revolution led by the ICWP and the building of a world without money. A world without markets—where nothing is sold, especially our labor power.
A world without barter—where we collectively produce everything humanity needs solely for our benefit and not to fill the million-dollar coffers of the capitalists. A world where we will all contribute according to our dedication and abilities and receive according to our needs.
The struggle of the Bolivian working class has brought this issue to the forefront. It cries out for a communist revolution and underscores its urgency in the face of the global capitalist collapse and the looming Third World War.