Jeffrey R Webber On May 1, 2006, Evo Morales' government nationalized the country's hydrocarbons sector (natural gas and oil), thereby reversing the privatization of hydrocarbons instituted in 1996 by then-president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada.
This is a popular victory borne trom the davs of mass action in October 2003 and May-June 2005, when the informal workers of the massive slum of El Alto, the Aymara peasantry of the altiplano, the miners and many others, demanded and won the nationalization of gas in monumental street battles.
In contrast, the first three months of the administration of the MAS (Movement towards Socialism) have shown little political direction.
The government repressed mobilizations by striking airline workers in their first months in office, and reneged on a promise to increase the minimum wage by between 50 and 100%.
Nonetheless, on May Day 56 gas installations throughout the country were occupied by the armed forces.
Details are as yet unclear, but this nationalization means less than the most radical demand of the movements, to expropriate the transnational gas companies without compensation, and more than the weakest MAS proposal to call only for an increase in taxes for transnationals to 50%.
Article 1 of the decree asserts that, "The state reclaims the property, the possession and the total and absolute control of these resources."
Article 2 states that all petroleum companes are current v active in the production of gas or petroleum within the national territory are obliged to hand over to the property of YPFB - the representative of the Bolivian state - the entire production of hydrocarbons.
During the period of transition, according to Article 4, thee largest gas deposits will