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The government of Evo Morales in Bolivia
was lifted into office in by two massive rebellions that drove two
presidents from office and came to the brink of insurrections. It
did not lead these uprisings but was able to benefit from them by
offering itself as the only available alternative in last December’s
elections.
Morales’ Party, the Movimiento
al Socialismo (MAS), emerged as the party of the peasant coca growers
who were threatened by the U.S.
war on drugs. It has been a fairly typical Latin American populist
party, a multi-class formation gathered around a charismatic leader.
Only nine months after it came
into office as the bearer of the hopes of Bolivia’s impoverished and
oppressed masses, especially the historically marginalized indigenous
peoples, Morales’ government seems to have reached the sort of impasse
that populist movements have repeatedly reached in Latin America,
although more rapidly than most of its predecessors. It has antagonized
the established economic powers without consistently mobilizing the
masses of working people to combat them.
An article in the New York Times
of Sept. 26 by Simon Romero began by noting the contradiction
between the words and actions of the Morales government and the result
that it is now in crisis: “Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera could
not have been more explicit in a fiery speech last week calling on
Bolivia’s indigenous groups to defend the government ‘with your chest,
with your hand, with your Mauser.’
“Mr. Garcia Linera, an urbane
sociologist normally known for his moderating influence, promptly
apologized and said his comments had been misinterpreted. But his
remarks underlined the heightening tension that is once again
threatening to tip this Andean nation into turmoil.”
The MAS government is blowing
hot and cold in actions as well. The hopes of the masses have been
focused on the Constituent Assembly, which was inaugurated on Aug. 6.
Morales and the MAS promised
that it would establish a new political, economic, and cultural order
in Bolivia.
But in the elections for the assembly, they failed to gain the
two-thirds majority that the initial rules had stipulated was necessary
to make major changes in the constitution. They got only a simple
majority. Faced with the intransigence of the right, the MAS delegates
tried on Sept. 1 to change the rules so that they could vote
alterations with a majority only.
In response, the right, centered
in the Departments (provinces) of Santa
Cruz, Tarija, Pando, and Beni,
the so-called Media Luna or Half Moon, the southeast fringe of Bolivia,
mounted a civic strike in protest. The MAS responded by organizing its
peasant base to seal off the region. And then they called the action off
and apparently gave up the attempt to change the Constituent Assembly
rules.
That is, the MAS delegates to
the Constituent Assembly dropped the Sept. 1 resolution and passed a
“temporary” one that left open the question of the rules, pending
negotiations with the right.
The radical Bolivian internet
news service Econoticias described the contradiction in a Sept. 25
article: “The government is demonstrating that it is incapable of
stopping this siege [by the right]. Its policy is oscillating in the
extreme. It goes from dialogue to greater confrontation.
“Thus, after a civic strike in
the Media Luna that seems to have infuriated the government, it ordered
a so-called ‘Siege of Santa Cruz,’ an action poorly organized by
organizations in the orbit of MAS, as a sort of revenge. Then, Garcia
Linera met with the prefects [governors of the provinces concerned],
emerged embracing them, and immediately called on the Omasuyos peasants
to take up arms, and then apologized for his blunder.”
In the Sept. 26 New York Times,
Romero pointed out that Morales’ approval rating in the polls has
fallen precipitously from 81 to 61 percent. A similar drop preceded
Morales’ decision to sign an economic alliance with Cuba
and Venezuela
and carry out a partial nationalization of Bolivia’s
oil and gas.
The semi-insurrectionary
uprisings of 2003 and 2005 were in fact focused on the demand for the
nationalization of the hydrocarbons. Morales’ predecessor, Carlos Mesa,
was forced to adopt a law that called for a partial nationalization.
Morales’ measure only revived it and strengthened it. But even that now
seems to have collapsed.
Morales’ oil minister, Andres
Soliz Rada, was forced to resign on Sept. 15 after the government
abandoned its attempt to take over the two main oil refineries owned by
the Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras (which is in fact dominated
by private investors, largely imperialist capitalists).
In stepping down, Soliz Rada
emitted a bitter lament that seemed to be the swan song of the
hydrocarbons nationalization: “A lot of people find that the
nationalization is almost perfect, with some limitations, as I noted.
But they pose a condition for saying that the nationalization decree is
a good one—that is, that it not be applied. If it is not applied, the
nationalization decree is excellent.” That is to say, it is only nice
words.
The nationalization decree had
only been temporary. The actual relationship with the transnational
companies was supposed to be negotiated over a three-month period. The
government still has a little less than a month before the
nationalization decree expires. But Soliz Rada raised the obvious
question of how is the government going to get anything substantial out
of the negotiations if it has already capitulated on one of the main
points.
The outgoing oil minister did
offer polite praises of his successor, Carlos Villegas. But the latter
is known in Bolivia
for negotiating the sell-out of El Mutun, which is estimated to be the
biggest iron deposit in the world, to the Indian trust Jindal.
Another contradiction of the
Morales government has emerged dramatically in the conflict between the
miner cooperatives and the unionized miners. The vice president has
offered the perspective of “Andean capitalism,” essentially a more
democratic form of capitalism based on small businesses, as the hope of
solving the country’s economic problems.
The privatization of the mines
carried out by previous neoliberal governments created a layer of “cooperativistas,”
that is, miners who contract as private entrepreneurs to do mining
work. Their organization is linked to Morales’ party, the MAS.
The “cooperativistas” are now
trying to take over the mines still under the aegis of the state mining
company, COMIBOL, and are assaulting the positions of the miners
belonging to the Bolivian Federation of Miners, historically the
vanguard of the working class in Bolivia.
The focus of the conflict is the Huanuni tin mine, the major tin mine
in the country and a historic fortress of the working class.
Econoticias reported in a Sept.
27 article: “Opening up lists for hiring 1500 new workers and blocking
roads to force new investment and provision of equipment, the Huanuni
miners have begun to impose workers control on the mines and the
dynamization of the state enterprise, vital links in achieving the
expulsion of the transnationals and the nationalization without
compensation of all our mineral resources.
“The action of mine workers is
designed to put an end to the transnational mining companies’ plunder
of Bolivia,
which makes it possible for foreign consortiums to concentrate
two-thirds of the production and export of minerals in their hands,
leaving only poverty and marginalization in the center of South American.
Every year, the mining companies get a little more than $500
million for the exports of raw materials, paying the state only $11
million in taxes and royalties.”
The article served as an
introduction to the manifesto adopted by the Huanuni miners in the July
4 assembly, which declared: “Facing the imminent danger that the
cooperativistas will invade the precincts of the enterprise, a
general assembly meeting in … issues the following message to
Bolivians….
“Today when prices for minerals
on the world market have started to pick up again, we find our
nationalized mining totally destroyed and assaulted by new bloodsuckers
who are desperately trying to gain profit for themselves at the expense
of depriving the country of the right to live in better conditions,
with free health care, better education, living wages of the workers.
Again the transnationals are eying the country’s rich mineral deposits
in order to ruthlessly exploit our resources and leave us with empty
holes in the country.
“For all these reasons, we
Huanuni miners call on the exploited workers of the country to organize
and fight for … consolidating and strengthening COMIBOL as the only
nationalized mining company that takes charge of working all the
country’s mineral resources so that the surplus they create will
benefit the exploited of Bolivia.
“Applying effectively collective
workers’ control to prevent COMIBOL from again being robbed by the
state, which remains bourgeois, as well as by imperialism and Bolivian
private enterprise.
“The immediate nationalization
of all the mineral deposits that today are in the hands of the
transnationals and Bolivian private enterprise without paying a cent or
converting the state into a partner of the present usurpers of our
mineral resources.
“Intransigently defending our
mineral resources and the mining enterprises that are still in the
hands of the state from any attempt to seize them by a layer of new
rich who are increasing their fortunes by exploiting their comrades who
are not lucky enough to be ‘partners.’
“All the country’s cities, work
centers, universities, native American communities, etc. must become
trenches in the battle to defend the nationalized mining industry, to
force the government, by popular mobilizations, to carry out the objectives
noted above.
“Bolivians have to understand
that their destiny depends on the way today that they defend their
natural resources from the predatory action of imperialism, national
private enterprise, and the new rich who are emerging in the shadow of
the newly rising prices for minerals.”
Econoticias reported Oct. 2 that
the Huanuni miners lifted their blockade of the installations after
winning promises from the government that the nationalized status of
the mine would be confirmed, 1500 miners would be hired, and that the
state would invest $43 million in developing the mine.
As the MAS government comes
under increasing pressure from both left and right, as could be
expected of such a multi-class party, there are more and more reports
of internal divisions. In a Sept. 19 article, Econoticias quoted a MAS
deputy to the Constituent Assembly, Raul Prada—who it said was in
charge of the MAS policy toward the body until recently—as saying that
Morales was the victim of a “whitish-mestizo” cabal that was
responsible for paralyzing the assembly.
The service also reported that
there was a conflict between the peasant Native American MAS delegates
and those coming from urban areas (presumably middle class) over
whether or to press for changing the rules of the Constituent Assembly
so that constitutional changes can be made by majority vote.
It seems that the process of
radicalization is reaching another crisis point in Bolivia
that will decide whether it goes forward or is thrown back. The
Bolivian working people have not yet been defeated. But if they win, it
is clearly not going to be under the leadership of Morales and the MAS.
A new leadership will have to be
built that can unite the oppressed and exploited and fight consistently
for their interests. It is this relationship of class forces that will
determine the future of Bolivia.
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